A Roman Holiday
by Zettel
Summary: Short Story. Chuck Bartowski is in the Eternal City for Christmas. He meets a woman who is there for a different purpose, but she decides to spend the holiday with him. Or so it seems.
1. Santa Maria

A/N: Because I have a little time on my hands still, a new Christmas short story. And yes, the title is _kind_ of a giveaway, if you know the film.

* * *

**A Roman Holiday**

Chapter One: _Santa Maria_

* * *

December 23, 1:25 pm  
_Piazza di Santa Maria  
_Rome

* * *

Chuck was seated in the _Piazza di Santa Maria_.

An espresso cup was on the small restaurant table in front of him, empty, but his head was full of the mosaics he had just seen in the _Basilica di Santa Maria_.

The waiter stopped by and Chuck, luckily able to order in English, asked for another espresso — and a glass of sparkling water. The day was sparkling, brightly sunlit, if cold, and Chuck's leather jacket was adequate to the cold, especially aided by the sunlight. The _Piazza_ was too beautiful to leave, too beautiful to seek a warm spot inside.

Another espresso would banish the cold altogether — or at least help keep it at arm's length.

He glanced at his watch. His sister, Ellie, had bought it for him for Christmas, given it to him early. She was a full-fledged doctor now, out of her residency, and she was a bit flush with cash. She'd bought Chuck a gorgeous Glycine Combat Sub, with a large dark face and easily legible markings.

She got it for him for his Christmas trip to Rome. It was expensive, but not Rolex expensive, not close. Chuck had shown it to Ellie one day when they went past a jewelry shop in Burbank, and she had remembered.

Wearing it now, seated in Rome, leather-jacketed, Chuck felt like a spy — like he was on a mission in the Eternal City, about to meet some dangerous stranger.

He scanned the _Piazza_ as he imagined spies must scan their surroundings; he checked sightlines, although he was not really certain what those were; he studied the faces of the few passersby, looking for suspicious characters.

He laughed at himself, glanced again at his watch.

The waiter brought a tray with the espresso and water and set it down. He took the empty cup. Chuck handed him the money necessary, then picked up the small cup and gulped down the wonderful, bitter coffee.

As he sat down the cup, a woman sat down at his table.

Chuck's eyes had been on the espresso cup when she sat down. He glanced up, startled, despite his spy play.

He had not seen her coming.

He would have known it if he had. She was beautiful. But Chuck had little time to consider that. She was panting, a little, and pale, a lot. Her red leather jacket was held closed by one hand. The zipper was torn, part of it hanging loose from the front of the jacket. A cut ran along one sleeve. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed his water and drank it in parched gulps.

She put the glass down and gave him a taut smile above powder blue eyes. "American?"

Chuck knew he could speak but he seemed to have forgotten how. He just nodded.

"Good. I'm sorry about this, but I need your help. Are you staying nearby?"

Chuck's head buzzed. Two espresso shots and then...this. Her. _What's happening? _Her blue eyes held a look of entreaty.

It was a bad idea, answering. He nodded.

"Take me there, please. I'm not picking you up. This is no scam. I just need some help."

She cast a glance around the _Piazza_, scanning it, checking sightlines, looking for suspicious characters. Actually doing the things he had been pretending to do.

She checked her watch and breathed out a curse when she realized the crystal was fractured, intact but spiderwebbed with close, white lines, obscuring the dial.

"What's the time?"

Chuck checked his watch. "2 pm."

The woman nodded. "So, take me to where you are staying." She looked around the _Piazza_ again, her body language more urgent.

"Okay, it's not far. The Hotel Santa Maria. It's right here in Trastevere."

She nodded. "Good." She stood up unsteadily. "May I lean on you?"

Chuck ignored the pervasive dream-likeness of the scene and came around the table.

She stood, using the table to steady herself. "Please, put your arm around me, like I'm your girl. And just talk to me as we walk along. Tell me anything. I'll listen."

Chuck slipped his arm around her. She was tall, slender, athletic. But he could tell she was hurting. He kept his arm as loose around her as he could, fearing that he might worsen her pain, and they started for his hotel.

They had only gotten started when she looked at him. "Talk, please." Closer to her now, he was startled by the blue of her eyes, its depth and brilliance, perhaps made more prominent by her paleness.

"Um...right...okay. Well, I'm Chuck. Chuck Bartowski of the _Burbank Bartowskis_. Not an old family, not a rich one, not a numerous one, but one from Burbank nonetheless. I have a sister, Ellie; she's a doctor. I'm _not_ a doctor. I'm...well...I take some explaining.

"Right now, I manage a Buy More. A big-box electronics store...Maybe you know them?" Her look said _no_. "Well, I manage one. The job kinda fell on me, like the sky on Chicken Little. — Do you think 'Little' was his surname, or was it like a nickname, you know, given to him by, like, the bigger, not-sky-shy chickens?" She gave him an incredulous look and a wondering smile, although he could also see that her pain was still present. "Right. Not a real issue. Anyway, I am managing this Buy More. The old manager, Big Mike, got moved up to Corporate, and I stepped in…"

Chuck looked at her. She seemed to be paying close attention to what he was telling her, despite her pain and her occasional glances over her shoulder.

"So, I've been there a while. I've been planning to quit and start my own software business but, well, you know how it goes, you get in a job and you get settled into the routine and pretty soon that's just who you are...the person who does that job...and somehow the rest of your life starts to conform to it and not it to the rest of your life...and then that's just it. You're Chuck Bartowski, Buy More Manager, even off the clock...you know?"

Her eyes turned navy, a trick of the sunlight and shadows or the result of some sudden emotion. "Yeah...Chuck...I know exactly what you mean."

"So, the Buy More starts doing better. I mean a lot better. And there's this contest among US Buy More managers, a store turn-around contest. And I...I mean we...my store...won. I got some cash and this trip."

She grimaced but held his gaze. "Why take the trip now, at Christmas?"

"Buy More SNAFU. The only time the replacement for me could come to run my store, this...well, tool, named Milbarge...was now. Something about family in the area, although I think he was pissed that Burbank won. His petty revenge. Who knows what mess I will find at the store?"

They had arrived at the hotel. Chuck led the woman inside, ignoring the curious look from the desk clerk. Chuck's room had been cleaned while he was out, he realized as he opened it and showed the woman inside. She looked around. "Nice."

It was. Simple but clean and well-ordered, the Hotel had been all Chuck hoped. He was already a fan of Trastevere, the neighborhood. It was funky, Bohemian, and there were several small, family-owned restaurants nearby. Although he had only been in Rome for two days, Chuck already felt comfortable. And a little alone.

He closed the door and the woman went and closed his curtains. The room became enshadowed. Chuck felt suddenly nervous. He had not really thought about what he was doing, had done. He had just done it. Something about her eyes.

She walked into the bathroom and flicked on the light. She looked at herself in the mirror, blinking and frowning. She turned to face Chuck; she still standing in the bathroom light. He was standing at the foot of his bed in the shadows of the room.

"Hi, Chuck. I'm Sarah. And I am sorry to...impose...on you like this, but I needed help." She let go of her coat and it opened. She had on a blue blouse beneath it, but Chuck could see the edges of a red stain. Blood.

Without thinking, he stepped into her light. "Let me help." She gave him a surprised smile and one nod. He carefully took one cuff of her jacket in one hand, placing the other on the shoulder. She turned, tugging her arm free. She winced and hissed.

"Sorry," Chuck whispered softly.

She gave him a look. "Not your fault. Thank you."

The jacket came off and Chuck could see that her blouse was bloodied along her side. There was a cut in the fabric, and he could see a cut in her white skin through the cut in the blouse.

"Hang on," Chuck said. He left the bathroom and went into the bedroom. He opened his suitcase and took out a small, red pouch. He brought it back to the bathroom.

Sarah looked at it. "A first-aid kit? In your suitcase?" Her grin was real despite being atop her discomfort. "Boy Scout _much_?"

Chuck laughed, and some of the tension in him, in her, in the room, was gone. "No, my sister is a doctor, and she always sneaks one of these into my luggage. It's not much, but maybe it will help. Given where that cut is, you're going to need my hands on you."

She shot him a look.

"Sorry, sorry, that came out wrong. I just mean that you are going to need my help."

She seemed reluctant to admit it but then her shoulders slumped. "Guess so, Chuck." She reached up and began to unbutton the blouse. Chuck looked away, then realized he was going to have to look at her to help her. He tried to make sure he kept himself focused on the injury, and not on anything else. She took off her blouse, revealing a blue, lacy bra that Chuck did not notice.

_I'm not noticing her blue, lacy bra. Or her beautiful white skin. _

He gave his head a quick, tight shake.

The wound was on her side, running around a bit toward her back. Chuck ran hot water, wet a cloth, and gently sponged at the cut. It was long but not deep. After he had cleaned it and the area around it, he waited for a moment to see if it would begin to bleed again. It did not, so he dried the area with a towel and opened the small first-aid kit. He fished out a couple of butterfly bandages, and working with deliberate care, he held the skin closed and bandaged it.

When he finished, he checked the bandage carefully, to make sure that its edges were all down and that it had secured the wound. Still looking at it, he spoke, thinking aloud: "You'll need to give yourself a couple of days, being careful with it, but I don't think stitches are necessary. The cut's clean and shallow; I doubt it will leave a scar."

He glanced up at Sarah. She was not looking at the bandages but at him. Her eyes had lightened from navy to another blue, maybe royal blue. The grin she gave him lacked all self-consciousness. "Aren't you going to kiss it?"

Chuck fumbled for a response. The thought of putting his lips to her skin made his face blaze. She noticed, and her grin intensified. "Thanks for that, Chuck." She moved carefully, rotating at the waist. Then she seemed to remember she was standing shirtless in the bright bathroom light. She crossed her arms without seeming defensive or accusatory. "It feels okay, the bandage. How does a Buy More manager learn to do that?"

"Sister, doctor. I kinda went to med school too, though I never got any credits. I helped Ellie study; I soaked up a lot. I was also her guinea pig on occasion. I've been bandaged for imaginary wounds countless times."

Sarah laughed, the first time she had. The sound was soft and buoyant, unexpected. She turned and walked into the bedroom.

Sarah had put her jacket on the sink, after Chuck helped her with it, and now Chuck picked it up. It was unexpectedly heavy. He felt the pocket. A gun.

The whole situation arrived in his consciousness. He had taken a wounded woman to his hotel room, _Sarah_, she said, and he had bandaged what was almost certainly a knife wound. She had a gun in her jacket pocket. She had not been playing a spy in the _Piazza_: she was a spy — or something like that.

Chuck took a deep breath. The situation was bizarre. He needed to keep his wits about him. _But that blue bra I'm not noticing is…_

Walking into the bedroom, Chuck put her jacket carefully on the bed, trying not to let on that he had noticed the weight, had any idea about what might be in its pocket, and he took off his own, putting it beside hers.

He walked past Sarah and to his suitcase. He rummaged around for a moment and then produced a sweatshirt, an old, comfortable one he'd had for years. It was red — or had been — with the Stanford _S_ on the front of it. Something about Sarah, and not just the first letter of her name, made it seem an appropriate choice. He handed it to her. Her eyes had shifted shade again, to some blue for which Chuck had no name, _indigo_, maybe — they seemed a live mood ring that altered with each shift in her, traveling the wide, wide gamut of shades of blue. She took the sweatshirt and pulled it on, putting her hands behind her neck to pull her long blonde hair from it. The movement seemed to pain her a bit, and he saw her bite her lip.

"Thanks, Chuck. Would it be okay if I stayed for a little while? Just in the room? I know it's a lot to ask, and you've already gone above and beyond. You've been...kind to me."

Chuck did not think before he answered. "That'd be okay. It's Christmas Eve Eve and I admit, as much as I've been enjoying Rome, I've been feeling a little lonely."

One of her eyebrows rose. "Really? You? If you don't mind me saying it, you seem like the kind of man who'd have friends, be good at...being friends."

Chuck ducked his head at the praise, unexpected in both form and content. "Um...well...I do have friends, one in particular, Morgan, but he couldn't come — his mother's been sick — and my sister couldn't get the time off, so here I am, by my lonesome. Just me in a huge, strange city."

"The story of my life…" Chuck thought he heard Sarah say as she turned away. She picked up her jacket, looked at the damage to it, and shook her head. "Too bad, that was one piece of the wardrobe I actually liked."

Chuck stuck on the word 'wardrobe'. Not a common word outside of movies or theater. He made himself walk to the one armchair in the room and sit down.

Sarah put the jacket back on the bed and sat down beside it, facing Chuck. The light from the bathroom lit the carpet between them, although they were both in shadows.

"So," Sarah breathed out, uncomfortably, after a long moment of silence, "here we are. Chuck and Sarah." She gestured from Chuck to herself and then fell quiet again, a guilty look flitting across her face.

Chuck chewed his lip for a second, then plunged in. "Look, Sarah, I gather you are in some trouble? I'd like to help, help more, if I can, but I don't...understand. Can you tell me what's going on?"

She stared at him for a long moment. He suspected her eyes changed shades several times as she did, but the room was too dark for him to be sure. She tensed, then relaxed, then tensed...then relaxed, staring at him all the while. A weariness seemed to be present in her, revealed when she relaxed, a weariness less physical than existential, a state more of spirit than of body.

Sarah was _tired_. There was a wracked look about her, like she was the remnants of someone, but no longer someone.

"I work...for the US government. The...job I was here to do...went _sideways_ on me. I managed to do...what I needed to do, but I got hurt, almost..." She paused, lost in reflection.

"I saw you in the _Piazza_ and you looked...you looked like I could trust you. I can't tell you much more than that, the details. But you aren't in any kind of trouble, and I don't believe anyone followed me here." She stood up and patted her pants pockets, her face first pinched and then disbelieving.

"Damn, I lost my phone! Do you have one?"

Chuck nodded, stood up and started across to the bed. He had put his phone in his jacket pocket. "No, wait," he heard her say. He stopped and looked at her. "What day is it again?" Her eyes were shifting shades, one unknown blue to another unknown blue.

"December 23rd."

"Christmas Eve _Eve_?"

"Right."

Her eyes deepened again, Prussian blue; he was close enough to see it this time, knew it. He could see her deciding, resolving. "And you say there are good restaurants nearby?"

Chuck hesitated, then nodded, unsure of what she was thinking. "Yeah, quite a few. And a couple of nice clubs, or so says the woman, the concierge, at the desk. I haven't gone to any of them but I...was considering it."

Sarah put her hand in her back pocket and came out with a small leather cardholder. She blew out a breath of relief, shaking credit cards from it into her hand.

"If you are game, Mr. Chuck Bartowski of the Burbank Bartowskis, how about we spend the day together here in Trastevere? Not stay in the room. Go out. My work is done and my boss...can't contact me. I'm safe. I could use a little downtime...And it sounds like you could use some...company?"

"What's your last name, Sarah?"

She grinned, seeming to take his question as an affirmative answer. "Walker, Sarah Walker."

* * *

A/N: So it begins.


	2. Caput Mundi

A/N: More story.

* * *

**A Roman Holiday**

Chapter Two: _Caput Mundi_

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December 23, 2:45 pm  
Hotel _Santa Maria  
_Rome

* * *

_Sarah Walker._

She smiled at him, the largest and brightest smile from her he had seen, and, like her laugh, it was unexpected. The weariness in her seemed to dissipate, like shadows chased into non-being by light.

For a moment, he thought he saw a younger version of the wounded woman who had been before him.

"So, Chuck, what do you say? Nothing too physically strenuous," she glanced away for a second, "but otherwise, I'm...game for whatever."

Chuck tried to respond but he managed only a muddle of nervous words. "Um...well...yeah, I guess…"

She cocked her head at him, chuckling. "Chuck?"

"Sorry," Chuck gulped, making his decision contemporaneous with uttering the words, "yes, I'd enjoy that."

She seemed delighted and her eyes remained a deep, dark blue. She looked down at the Stanford _S_ on her chest. "I guess this will have to do. I can pick up a new blouse and jacket while we're out. I assume there are shops nearby?"

Chuck pondered the question for a second, then nodded, blushing. He recalled one in particular, with a manikin in the window, a woman, dressed in sheer lilac lingerie. He had turned around after passing the window and walked by it again, ashamed to linger, but unable to deny himself another look at the lingerie. _It's been such a long time._

Sarah noted the blush. "What is it, Chuck?"

He looked at Sarah and for a split second, his imagination, acting under its own impulse, clothed — unclothed — her in that lilac caress...He shook his head again. That was not the man he was; he was more respectful. But his not noticing her lacy blue bra was playing havoc with his self-control. He fought to blank the lilac from his mind's eye.

"Nearly nothing. I mean, nothing. Nothing. Yes, there are some shops nearby."

She nodded eagerly. "Okay, well, I'm hungry too. Maybe we could grab something to hold us over until dinner?"

"Sure, that'd be fine."

"Just give me a minute," Sarah asked, turning to the bed and picking up her damaged jacket. She walked into the bathroom and closed the door, leaving Chuck standing in the shadow-draped bedroom. He spun in place, looking around the room but not for anything in particular. He was sure that Sarah was reclaiming her gun. He heard the toilet flush, then heard the faucet run.

He thought about running. Running from the room. From her. But her eyes, even unseen, held him fixed, blued his feet to the floor.

Sarah came out of the bathroom and put her jacket back on the bed. "Well, that's hopeless. I'll need to pick up a jacket too."

She looked at Chuck, apparent anticipation bringing color to her cheeks. She gestured to the door. "Lead the way, Mr. Bartowski."

He took a step toward the door but stopped. "Okay, Ms. Walker. Miss Walker. Mrs. Walker."

She laughed. "Either of the first two, but there is no Mr. Walker." Her emphasis on the final words struck Chuck, puzzled him.

"Not even your dad?"

She gave him a look, almost turquoise. "No, not even him."

The answer did nothing to decrease Chuck's puzzlement. They left the room and walked through the lobby. Chuck stopped at the concierge desk. Behind it was a petite brunette who flashed a huge smile at Chuck, although the smile weakened when glanced at Sarah. The woman turned back to Chuck and her smile strengthened again. "Mr. Bartowski, how are you enjoying the city?" Her English was good, although heavy with her Italian accent.

Chuck glanced at Sarah and then back to the woman. "Fine, Sophia, fine. Well, it's Rome, so of course, it's _fine_. But it's overwhelming. Too much to see. Too much history, too many ruins, too much blue in the air."

Sophia laughed and put her hand on Chuck's hand, leaning toward him. "You are perfect for the city, Mr. Bartowski, a handsome young man, a poet. Where better for such a sensitive soul than the _Caput Mundi, _as Ovid called it?"

Chuck was unsure what to make of Sophia's hand on his. She had been nice to him since his arrival. Eager and willing to talk. But she had not touched him until now. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sarah looking at Sophia's hand. Sarah had tensed again.

Careful to do it slowly enough not to offend Sophia, Chuck took his hand back, covering the motion with a comment. "Ovid? He wrote _Ars Amatoria, _right?"

Sophia smiled. Sarah, he noticed, seemed to grow tenser. Sophia giggled out of her smile. "So, you've read his book on the art of seduction, of love, ...Chuck?" Her tone had become openly flirtatious and she seemed to be working hard not to notice Sarah. Chuck had told her to call him 'Chuck' the day before, but she had not done so until now.

"He also wrote _Metamorphoses_, right?" Sarah interjected, forcing Sophia to acknowledge her.

Sophia nodded at Sarah but turned immediately back to Chuck. "Is Ovid your _teacher_, Chuck?"

Chuck looked at Sarah. She appeared focused on him, waiting for his answer. "No." He laughed nervously, "I read some of that in a college literature class...I don't remember much."

Sophia laughed. "It's like riding a bike. It will come back to you."

"Chuck," Sarah said, intoning his name intimately, "we need to get going…" Her tone shifted from intimate to irritated as she finished.

Chuck nodded. "So, ...Sophia, can you recommend a club nearby?"

Sophia's face fell but she masked it quickly. "A club. It's very early…"

"Right, but for later…"

"There's _Rabbit Hole Club_…" She pursed her lips, about to go on.

The name struck a chord with Chuck. "That's the one. Can you tell me the address?"

Sophia did, writing it out on a small piece of Hotel stationery. Chuck took it from her, thanking her.

"That's going to be fun, Chuck," Sarah said, glancing at Sophia. "I _love_ to dance…"

Chuck turned away from the desk and Sarah turned with him. "But your side…" Chuck commented, keeping his voice low.

Sarah smiled at him. "I'll take it easy...on you. — That woman. Has she been that...friendly...all along?" Sarah glanced back at Sophia as they left the Hotel.

"She's nice. She's been nice. But that was...more friendly."

Sarah made a skeptical sound. "She thought she could play the long con, but realized she couldn't. I ratcheted up her timetable."

"_The long con_?" Chuck stopped on the street and looked into Sarah's eyes. "So, she was just...manipulating me...She really doesn't...like me? But what would she have to gain?"

Sarah's face showed a flare of guilt again, like back in Chuck's room, but it was gone so fast that Chuck barely noticed it. "No, she likes you. But I'm guessing she wasn't sure about her own…interest...until I showed up. So, not really _a con — _maybe _very extended foreplay_: she wasn't _playing_ you, but she was _playing with_ you."

Chuck blinked at her. "Oh. I don't know what to say to that. I hadn't thought about her like that, really."

Sarah's eyes searched his for a second. "Amazingly, Chuck, I believe you. C'mon, let's eat."

They walked along the streets for a little while until they found a _suppli _vendor. "Oh, Chuck, have you had these? They're _so_ good."

Her excitement tickled Chuck. He grinned at her. "No, but they smell wonderful. I was planning…"

"No need to plan. Let's eat."

Sarah stepped up to the window from which a man was taking orders, serving food. She spoke to the man in Italian, her side of the conversation sounding, at least to Chuck's ears, as native as the man's. The man seemed to think so too. Although Chuck could make out only a word here and there, he was sure the man had complimented Sarah's mastery of the language.

She finished ordering. A moment later, the man handed out to small paper trays, each holding two small balls. Sarah handed one tray to Chuck.

Chuck sniffed at them. Sarah was watching him, her eyes dark, her smile luminous. "It's Rome's version of _arancini_." Chuck gave her a blank shrug. "They're fried rice balls, filled with meat, marina, and mozzarella." She picked up one of hers and bit into it. She closed her eyes. "_Mmmmhmm_. So, so good."

Chuck bit into one. It was magic. "That's delicious," he said when he had swallowed his first bite. Sarah licked her lips and smiled at him. They ate in silence for two or three minutes, then finished. Chuck looked at Sarah. "So, _suppli_?" She nodded. "What's that mean?"

She chuckled, turning to pick up a napkin from the window and wiping her mouth. "Well, for these, it means, _suppli. _In Corsican, the word means, roughly, _he begged_…"

"Do you think that meaning is part of why they are called _suppli_? Guess that's related to, like, _supplicant_?"

"Don't know about the food, but, yes, the words are connected, related."

Chuck pressed his lips together for a moment. "So, you know a bunch of languages, I'm guessing."

Sarah gave him a quick glance and shrugged. "Some."

Chuck did not press. Sarah looked at him more closely. "C'mere, Chuck." He took a step toward her automatically. She took her napkin and wiped the corner of his mouth. "There, that's better. Can't have you walking around with marinara on your mouth. Sophia might feel required to kiss it off." Sarah laughed but her eyes, darker still, settled for a moment on his lips. Chuck's slipped from her eyes to her lips.

She stepped back, her eyes lightening as she did, her gaze back on his eyes. "So, let's walk a few of these carbs off and then you can help me buy some new clothes."

ooOoo

They walked. Not aimlessly but not with any real destination in mind, not at first. As they walked, Chuck ended up telling Sarah more about himself, his sister, her fiancé, his friend Morgan, the Buy More. He talked about his plans for the future.

They did not talk about her. Chuck asked, but she either did not answer, answered vaguely, or answered equivocally. It was maddening because she fascinated Chuck as no other woman he had ever met fascinated him. And that included Jill, his college girlfriend, and only serious relationship, and Lou, his most recent...well, not girlfriend, but whatever she had been before a family emergency caused her to quit her job at a near-The-Buy-More sandwich shop and rush to Alabama. He and Lou had not gotten serious, and he did not know whether they might have become serious, but he was indebted to her for ushering him out of his long, Jill-induced sleepwalk. — Still, they had not made it to a third official date before she had relocated to the Heart of Dixie. He had liked her, but she did not exert the soul-tugging traction that Sarah did, and he had known — _known: _was that even the right word? — Sarah for only a few hours.

No one had ever made him feel so wide awake.

Or so much at a loss.

She talked but said almost nothing, not when the talk was about her. But she listened — avidly. _I never actually used that word before, 'avidly'. But it fits. _It was like she was hungry for the details of his life, as if the very normality he took to stamp it as boring or unremarkable made it significant to her, haloed it in tempera and gold. And, perhaps because wiping his mouth with her napkin had opened a gate, she kept touching him. Her touch was not long, lingering, but it was frequent, soft, possessive.

They finally made found themselves at a clothing store. To Chuck's embarrassment, it was the one with the lilac-lingerie-garbed manikin in the window. Chuck kept his eyes from the display as Sarah stopped to look at it. After gazing at it for an appreciative moment, she glanced in Chuck's direction. He was facing the window too, but staring down at his black tennis shoes. He could feel her glance, see it sidelong.

"What do you think of that, Chuck? It's a beautiful color, don't you think?" Her tone was playful, light.

Chuck glanced up and then back down, taking the quickest look he could manage. "Yeah, yeah, um, beautiful."

She sounded like she was about to laugh. "What do you think of its cut, Chuck, do you like the..._bodice_?"

Chuck kept studying his shoes. But he repeated the word. "Bodice?"

"The chest, Chuck, like..a bra, except, in this case, lilac, — not _blue_."

Chuck burned red. Sarah bumped his shoulder with hers. "You are officially _cute._" She turned toward the entrance. Chuck turned too.

"'Cute'?" Chuck's mouth outran his mind. "Isn't that the password to the Friend Zone?"

Sarah stopped, the shop door open. She gave him a midnight stare. "Not when I use it, Chuck." She went inside.

Chuck felt chastised and hopeful all at once. He followed her.

They walked along the aisles of the small shop. Sarah stopped now and then to consider an item more closely, pulling it off the rack, brushing her hand against the fabric. She kept several items, folding them across her arm.

A saleswoman approached them and Sarah talked to her in Italian. The woman pointed toward the rear of the shop. Sarah nodded, continued talking, and pointed toward the front. The woman walked Sarah and Chuck to the back, to the dressing rooms.

"Chuck, would it be too much to ask you to...wait while I try on a few things?"

"No, another thing having a sister makes you practiced at is sitting outside of dressing rooms. Go ahead. I'll wait for you."

Her eyes dropped for a second. "Would you give me your opinion, if I show you the ones I like?"

"Sure, but I'm sure you know what you like best."

"Maybe," she said, seeming genuinely unsure, "but I'd like to know what you like."

Chuck smiled. "Then, I'm your man."

She gave him another midnight stare, then disappeared into the dressing room. Chuck perched in a delicate-looking, spindle-legged pink chair, fearful it would splinter beneath him, and waited.

After a few minutes, Sarah stepped out.

She had gathered her hair up into an impromptu bun. She was wearing a black dress. It was knee-length, with black, scalloped lace trim around the neck, the sleeves. Beneath it, she had on a pair of black leggings. She was barefoot.

She gave Chuck an uncertain shrug. "Well?"

"It's great!"

"Really? It's sort of...plain."

"But you aren't," Chuck responded quickly, then he realized what he had said. "I...uh…"

She grinned, suddenly certain. "And that's what I mean by 'cute'. — So, you really like it?" Sarah spun slowly in place. The dress lifted, revealing more of her legs in the tight leggings.

Chuck nodded. "I really do like it."

She gave him a grateful look. "Thanks, Chuck. I don't usually do..._holidays_...I never have much time off, almost none, and it comes...when it comes. I usually sleep, ...try to recover. I haven't gone out to dinner, _really gone out to dinner_, in...in..._a long time. _And I haven't dressed up, when it wasn't for work...well, for a long time either."

Her cheeks had pinked and she looked down at her dress. Again, Chuck had the feeling that he was looking at a younger woman than the one he first met. She was glowing, twinkling, a star in the night sky. He felt for a moment as if he was meant to find his way by following her.

Chuck was about to say more about the dress when the saleswoman arrived. She had several boxes, apparently of shoes, and a couple of bags. She handed the entire pile to Chuck. He took it. Then, she stood back and looked at the dress. "My dear," she said, in English so Italianate it took Chuck a second to recognize the words, "you are truly a woman who needs no ornament. You simply are an ornament."

She turned to leave. Sarah glanced at Chuck and her pink cheeks became red. She took the boxes from him without making eye contact. He was almost certain that blushing was not a stock-in-trade in Sarah's repertoire of reactions. She glanced back at him and he gave her a rogue-ish smile, feeling for the first time since she sat down at the _Piazza _equal to the situation, if not equal to her. "I told you."

Her eyes became so dark that they seemed to swallow him. A smile, small but somehow deep, as deep as she was, graced her lips. She went back into the dressing room.

A moment later, the saleswoman approached him. She held out a small box. In it was an exquisite broach, fragile, antique, red rubies and green emeralds, a representation of mistletoe. "This came to us on consignment," the woman said quietly. "It is quite old. Your girlfriend needs no ornament, it is true, but I believe this ornament needs her."

Chuck looked at it. He had no sense of what Sarah would prefer in jewelry. Beyond the fractured watch — which, he realized, she was not wearing — she had worn and was wearing no jewelry. He checked the price tag, doing the conversion quickly in his head. It was expensive. Sarah was not his girlfriend.

"I'll take it."

He got his wallet from his jacket pocket and handed her his credit card. He had no final plans for the extra cash he had gotten from The Buy More. He was using part of it for incidentals on the trip, but that left a lot over. He had vaguely thought he might save it all to help start his software company. But he had a feeling, a dizzying, empowered-and-helpless feeling, that he was living through the most important hours of his life, and he was not going to stint on them.

On her.

The woman took the broach and his credit card. She had just gotten away when Sarah came out, wearing a blue blouse much like the one she had been wearing earlier, but this one with small blue buttons on...the _bodice_. — _I don't know that I needed to know that word. _

Chuck's eager smile was all the comment Sarah needed, and she went back inside.

The saleswoman came back with a small bag, a receipt, and Chuck's card. He put the box in one of his jacket pockets, hiding it just before Sarah came out. She had several items over her arm, including the black dress and blue blouse, and she had two boxes and a couple of bags too.

They walked to the front and Sarah paid for her items. She talked pleasantly with the saleswoman in Italian, and twice the woman and Sarah had turned to Chuck as they talked. Sarah winked at him the second time.

They left the store and stood on the sidewalk. Sarah handed Chuck some of the items. "We should go back to the Hotel. Change for dinner." Excitement was in her voice. She leaned close to Chuck and he could see the length of her lashes. "Playing hooky is _lots_ of fun. I can't remember the last time I did not have my phone on, and on me or beside me. I've been...my boss' _beck and call girl _for too long."

Chuck looked into her eyes and she looked back into his. The blue of them paled as she heard her own words and she leaned back. "So, which way? I admit I've not been paying attention."

"This way," Chuck said, starting to walk. "Our Hotel is this way."

Sarah brushed his shoulder with hers as she matched his stride. He thought about the broach in his pocket. He looked at his watch. 5:12 pm.

_Is it possible to lose your heart in a few hours' time? Could a man's world recenter itself in an afternoon? _

_Cor Mundum. _

He glanced at Sarah just as she turned her head. She had been glancing behind them.

* * *

A/N: More next time. Dinner and dancing...and stuff.

I love to hear from you; please leave a review!


	3. Ars Amatoria

A/N: Two chapters to go after this one. We are at the heart of our little tale.

* * *

**A Roman Holiday**

Chapter Three: _Ars Amatoria_

* * *

December 23, 5:13 pm  
Trastevere Shops  
Rome

* * *

Chuck glanced behind them but saw nothing but the busy sidewalk. No one jumped out as a suspicious character. And Sarah did not glance back again. In fact, she stopped at a shop a few doors down, a leather goods and electronics shop. "Hold these for just a minute, Chuck, please." She handed him her bags and went inside.

He stood on the street, encumbered by bags, trying his best not to dam the flow of pedestrians. He kept sneaking looks back the way they had come, but he continued to see no one who attracted interest.

His hands were tiring, the handles of the bags biting into his palms when Sarah emerged. She was wearing a new leather jacket, but this one was longer, made like a short trench coat. It was black. She was pulling a black leather suitcase. Chuck stared at her, then at the suitcase. "Lost mine," was all that she said. They reapportioned the bags and walked on to the Hotel. Once inside, Sarah turned without comment and went to the front desk. Chuck walked on past the desk. He was not sure what Sarah was doing and he did not want to intrude.

He was waiting when Sophia arrived. Sophia came in from some other part of the Hotel and did not see Sarah at the desk.

"Ah, Chuck," she said, and Chuck, thinking about what Sarah had told him about her, noticed how brightly she smiled — and how very attractive she was. "I take it you are back from your afternoon out?" She glanced at the bags and noticed the shop name on them; her smile weakened and she scanned the lobby, seeing Sarah at the desk. "It looks like you shopped successfully."

Chuck shrugged as well as he could, given the bags in his hands. "Ah, successfully, yes. Lots of success."

Sophia laughed, a bright tinkle, the sound like a music box. She was about to say something more when Sarah walked up. "Everything's taken care of, Chuck," she said while looking at Sophia. "They'll send the things I requested to our room."

Sophia frowned at Sarah. "How did the two of you meet?" The question did not sound like idle curiosity — there was a hint of something, accusation, in it.

Sarah's smile in response was unaffected. "We just bumped into each other, and started chatting...and I thought he was cute." She stepped closer to Chuck as she spoke, and rested her head on his shoulder, her upper body in close contact with his.

The suggestion of intimacy caused anger to flash in Sophia's eyes. She focused wholly on Chuck. "You know, Chuck, you have to be careful in Rome. There are lots of predators, of many different kinds, ...how do you say it in English?" She shifted her gaze to Sarah. "Con artists, prostitutes."

Chuck felt Sarah stiffen beside him. She lifted her head and Chuck had a feeling of impending danger.

"Sorry, Sophia, lots to do...lots to do," Chuck said as he backpedaled away, hoping Sarah would follow. Sarah turned and looked at him. Her cheeks were red; guilt flared on her face again and was gone.

Sophia stood and glared as Sarah caught up with Chuck.

The walked to the room in silence. Chuck put down one set of bags and opened the door. They stepped inside. The brush with Sophia seemed to have dampened Sarah's mood. Even after her backward glance, she had not seemed concerned, worried.

She did not seem concerned or worried now, or not exactly, but the weariness had returned. She looked older. Her eyes seemed almost glassy.

Chuck checked his watch. 6:20 pm. He walked to the small desk in the room and put the bags down on it carefully. There was a knock on the door. Sarah put down her bags and turned to open it. A bellboy stood there with a small bag in his hand. He spoke to Sarah in Italian. She answered. She turned to look at Chuck. "Can you tip him? I don't have any cash."

Chuck joined them and dug out some money. He handed it to the young man. With one last look at Sarah, the young man left. Chuck closed the door.

He was standing right beside Sarah. "Did Sophia...what she said...did she _upset _you?" He looked into her eyes.

She dropped her head so that he could not see them. "No, no, just getting a little tired of her routine. Can't she see that you are spending the holiday with me?" Without meeting his gaze, she turned and walked to the bathroom. She held up the bag. "These are the toiletries I requested downstairs. Is it okay if I put them in the bathroom?"

Chuck walked to the armchair and sat down. He felt dizzy again — but this time less empowered and more helpless. _What is happening? What am I doing? _He became aware of the box in his jacket, the brooch. _Why did I buy that? I know nothing about this woman. I've known her for an afternoon. _

Sarah had turned to look at Chuck. "Chuck?"

"Oh, yes, of course, _mi casa, su casa._" He knew he sounded distracted. Sarah put the bag down on the bathroom counter, then walked to Chuck. She crouched down in front of him, her eyes level with his.

"Chuck, talk to me. What's wrong?"

He wanted to kiss her so much that he felt like he might explode. He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers.

She made a small sound, hard to decipher. Not a word — a whimper of surprise. _Can you _whimper _in surprise? _But the sound was no kind of warning, no verbal gesture asking him to stop. She leaned into him, pressing their lips together more tightly.

Chuck reached out, put his hands on her shoulders, carefully, or as carefully as the wild upsurge of passion would allow. Her lips parted and he opened his own.

And then he could taste her, and did, and she tasted good. He felt her hands on his shoulders, mirroring his, and felt her tongue sweep gently against his own. Just as he started to leave the chair, he remembered her wound. He sat back. She seemed to think he intended to end the kiss, and so she sat back too, the kiss done.

Her eyes were Prussian blue again. As she had been when she sat down in the _Piazza_, she was panting. Or Chuck was panting.

They both were panting.

"I'm not sure that was an answer, but that was _something._" She smiled at Chuck and stood. "Are you okay?"

Chuck took a minute. "Are you asking about before, or now?"

"Either."

"Right now, I'm as okay as it may be possible for me to be. Before, I was not-so-okay."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know how to make sense of this," he gestured from himself to her and back to himself, then around the room, "and I don't know you, and you won't tell me anything, and yet I have the strongest feeling that, sometimes, I can see you, that I do know you. And...hell, I sound like the first draft of a bad stream-of-consciousness novel…"

She studied him. The Prussian blue of her gaze had shifted again to a lighter shade. "Chuck…" She seemed vexed, but not with him. She walked to the bed and sat down. "Chuck, you are a nice guy. And I know this is crazy...It feels crazy on my end too. I don't do..._nice guys_…" She stopped, pursed her lips. "I didn't mean that like it sounded, Chuck. It's just...that men like you are not strewn thickly on the ground anywhere, but particularly not on my...path."

Chuck looked at her as she glanced up at him, taking in his reaction. "First, 'cute', now 'nice', once we get to 'sweet', I'll have collected the middling Trinity." There was an edge of resentment in his voice.

Sarah heard it. "Chuck, you live in a world where 'cute' and 'nice' have a regular application, I guess. Cute puppy. Nice customer. I live in a world where those terms are almost empty of application. Cute nothing. Nice nothing. Yes, I know what the words mean, but you don't know what I mean by them. It's not middling, it's not damning with faint praise. — I just kissed you back, dammit." She had matched his resentment with her own exasperation.

"I know, Sarah, believe me, that wasn't wasted on me. I meant it about being as okay as… I just don't know what to make of what's happening…"

"Do we have to know, Chuck? It's Christmas. We're in this amazing city. We're together. Let's just...enjoy our holiday."

"But you're leaving later, right?"

She seemed caught in something, between somethings. Her mouth opened, then closed. "Can we leave later for _later_, Chuck? I'd like to shower, put on some of my new clothes, and go out with you."

Chuck felt like she had gone out-of-focus. Him, too. The room. Nothing remotely like this had ever happened to him. Again, a sense that something decisive in his life was happening, that he had reached a watershed in his life, that he would date an era in it from this day forward, overwhelmed him. He looked at Sarah and she went back into focus. She was staring at her hands, waiting for his response.

She was the moral to some fable he had never heard. An esoteric secret in Aesopian language.

"Yes," he finally said, his voice quiet, "we can leave later for later. Let's go out. A...date?"

She looked up from her hands and into his eyes. Her smile was unexpectedly vulnerable. "Yes, Chuck, a date."

His heart pounded and he felt a rush of happiness.

She took off her new jacket, gathered two of her bags and her new suitcase, and went into the bathroom. A few minutes later, Chuck heard the shower start.

He got up and took off his own jacket. He picked up the room phone and asked to be connected to _Trattoria Da Enzo al 29_. Antonio, the owner, recognized Chuck's name when it was given — he had dinner there his first night in Rome, and lunch another day — and Antonio eagerly promised Chuck a prime table. "_Romantico!_"

Chuck hung up the phone and looked at this watch but did not register the exact time. A sinking feeling that his rush of happiness had an expiration date, and that it was likely to be much sooner than later, filled him.

ooOoo

They walked behind Antonio, who was talking and laughing volubly, pleased to see Chuck. They had talked during Chuck's first visit and taken an immediate liking to each other. Antonio not only seemed pleased to see Chuck, but also pleased to see that he was not alone.

He led them to a small table in the corner. The yellow-checked tablecloth rhymed with the ochre walls. The place was like a restaurant from an American 50's film shot in Rome. Stoutly traditional, uncompromising, all about the food.

Antonio stayed until they were seated, talking briefly with Sarah in Italian and then chatting in English with Chuck.

When he left, Sarah leaned forward. "See, I knew you were good at...friends. He really likes you. He told me how lucky I am in my choice of..._boyfriends_."

Chuck winced. "Sorry about that...I never said…"

Sarah reached across the table. Her eyes were dark again above the yellow-checked tablecloth. "It's okay. For tonight, let's just..._pretend_?"

Chuck did not know if he had ever heard a word that was as deeply happy-sad as that word at that moment. _Pretend. _

Chuck reached into his pocket and took out the box with the brooch and he handed it to her. She took it, inhaling sharply. "Chuck, what did you do?"

He did not answer, he just nodded to the box. She opened it and he heard her inhale again. "Chuck!"

Sarah had taken off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair when they sat down. She was wearing the black dress and leggings, and a pair of black suede boots.

She stood up and walked to his side of the table. He had expected her to balk at the gift, or maybe to see some hint that she thought it slightly ridiculous, clunkily traditional. But as she came around the table, her eyes were bright, her smile a mile wide.

She handed the box to him. "Please, put it on me." He took it out of the box and affixed it to her dress. She glanced down at it there, and reached up to touch it. She stood on her toes and gave Chuck a warm, quick kiss. "You really shouldn't have done this," she said but her tone was not chiding, it was all surprise and gratitude. "Is it mistletoe?"

Chuck nodded and Sarah yanked him to her, her hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt, and she kissed him long and deep. When she released him, the other patrons in the restaurant clapped and whistled. Chuck heard Antonio but did not see him. "Go, Chuck!"

Sarah went back to her chair and sat down, touching the brooch once more. She gave him a breathless smile. "Wow, when you pretend, you really _pretend._"

Chuck lost his smile. "No, Sarah, not pretend. Not the gift or the fact that it is a gift. That's yours now. I just wanted you to have it. A Christmas present. — It's not part of the _wardrobe._"

Sarah lost her smile and her eyes dimmed. "I'm sorry, Chuck, I...I keep saying the wrong words but meaning the right thing. I can't seem to speak English around you. I love it, Chuck. I've never been given anything like it before. Thank you."

She found her smile again and her eyes brightened. She watched Chuck's face.

"Sarah," he said with a sigh, "can't you tell me something, anything. Something real. I'm beginning to feel like a character in a wrongly accented Kafka novel. As if everything everyone says, everything I say, has more than one meaning but that the other meanings are all escaping me."

Sarah looked at him for a long time and her eyes did the shifting shades trick, their blues standing in relief against the ochre walls of the _Trattoria._"

She spoke softly when she spoke, each word a cat's footfall. "I'm sorry, Chuck. I wish…I want...I..." She stopped for a second, then continued: "Kafka? Didn't he write a story called _The Metamorphosis_?"

Chuck tried to right himself after the conversational whiplash. "Um...Yes, that's his. Salesman Gregor wakes up one day to find that he has become a giant insect. I always imagined a roach."

A visible tremor ran through Sarah. "I wish I had never read that story." She said nothing more but was staring at her hands again.

Chuck had no idea what was happening, what she was thinking. She looked wracked again, ruined. Their conversation was reeling, manic.

"Wait. Earlier today, the first time we talked to Sophia, you mentioned Ovid's _Metamorphoses. _What's the connection? Is there a connection? I don't understand."

Chuck watched as Sarah willed herself under control. She put her hands in her lap, out of view. Her eyes were powdery. "I'm sorry, Chuck...This time of year...sometimes it gets to me. No good memories of it. Lots of bad ones." He could see her mind racing. "But, when we were talking to Sophia, you mentioned Ovid's _Ars Amatoria. _That's Ovid's book about seduction and love, right?"

"Evidently, whatever it is you do has given you time to read." Chuck knew she was changing the subject, but he was willing to do it.

She shrugged. "I had a lot of time as a girl, and then there was college…"

"Let me guess. You went to...Harvard." Her eyes darkened and she glanced away. When she looked back they had lightened again.

"No, no. Not Harvard. Someplace less...prestigious." She gave him a self-deprecating grin, but Chuck was not buying it. She had gone to Harvard. He had seen it in her eyes. She was unprepared for his lucky guess, and the truth of it had been confirmed in dark blue.

"Right, probably The Colorado School of Mimes." Sarah had taken a drink from the water the waiter had put on the table, and she coughed a little back into the glass, then shook her head at Chuck. "There's no such school, is there, Chuck?"

"Well, no, — but there is a Colorado School of _Mines_…If you can't do silence, you could do shadow..."

Before the conversation could go on, the waiter pulled an empty chair to their table, sat down and went in detail over the evening specials. They ended up ordering the deep-fried Jewish artichokes to share and _pasta cacio e pepe_ for each of them. They added a bottle of wine that the waiter recommended.

"So, you told Sophia you read Ovid for a college lit class...Was that true?"

Chuck shrugged. "Yes and no. I did read it for a class at Stanford, that's where I went, but I had already read it, in Latin."

"When?"

"In high school. Believe it or not, Latin was a language elective at my high school. I took classes for three years and at one time I could read it about as fast as I read English. But it's gotten really rusty, as a few days in Rome has taught me."

"So, I'm not the only one who knows a language other than English?"

"I guess not. Except no living person speaks my language."

Sarah laughed, her earlier mood seeming to have passed. "So, all this reading of _The Art of Love, _and in the original tongue, no less," Sarah lingered for a split second on 'tongue', "...has it made you a master? What did Sophia ask, 'Is Ovid your teacher'?"

Chuck shook his head. "You're looking at a grown man who has had one serious relationship in his entire life and it Hindenburg-ed in utterly fantastic fashion during my senior year at Stanford. Since then, I've mostly been licking my wounds."

"Licking?"

"Stop, Sarah, please. I'm not sure I can take it after those two kisses, three kisses?, ...the kisses."

He breathed out, embarrassed. "I am no master of the art of love. I've actually never had the ambition. Seducing someone has never interested me. I wouldn't want to be with anyone I had to _seduce. _I don't want to artificially manufacture desire, I want to respond to its natural occurrence."

Sarah gave him a sharp look, suspicious but hurt around the edges. "I need to go to the Ladies room," she announced softly. She got up and left the table.

Chuck knew the conversation had reeled again. He really, really sucked at dating. Time to just face the facts.

The artichokes arrived before Sarah returned, but she came just moments later. She gave Chuck a tight smile. "Those look really good."

Chuck smiled, relieved. Although she had left her jacket at the table, it crossed his mind that she might have left altogether. "Antonio says they're the best in Rome."

"Well, I'm hungry. It's been a long time since the _suppli. _— And, Chuck, I was admiring the brooch in the bathroom mirror. On me. It's really lovely. Really. The best Christmas present I've ever gotten." She reached out for his hand and when he gave it to her, she squeezed it until it hurt, then released her grip but kept his hand.

Chuck felt his mood lighten again. Her eyes were dark and her smile had loosened.

The artichokes were as good as Antonio claimed. Better, actually.

ooOoo

The conversation at dinner had stopped reeling, finally, and Sarah seemed to become the younger woman she had been for most of the afternoon, a young woman on holiday.

Over dessert, she was telling him about a certain tricky turn of phrase in Italian, laughing as she did so, her teeth showing. _Holiday, _Chuck mused as he listened, _a form of 'holy day'. She seems like she's never had a holiday, just an unbroken string of workdays, whatever a workday is for her._

ooOoo

Standing in the long line outside the entrance to _Rabbit Hole Club, _Sarah pressed against him, willingly trapped in her scent, Chuck was happy to wait. Every so often, she would give him a small kiss. None grew into anything longer or deeper, like earlier, and each skated the line between playful and romantic, a smidgen of both.

One of the doormen from the club walked along the line, looking at the people standing there. He stopped when he got to Sarah. He spoke to her, gesturing toward the door with a smile. Sarah answered, making clear her hold on Chuck's arm. The doorman shook his head _no, _then so did Sarah. After a fuming moment, the doorman gestured again.

"C'mon, Chuck, they're letting us in."

"Us, you mean you and your below-the-mark _plus one?_"

Sarah stopped and turned Chuck around bodily to face her. "This is my holiday. And I am absolutely happy with my boyfriend."

Chuck decided to stop trying to score the evening, to separate what was true from what was false. He nodded. She was leading and he was following.

Inside, they found a table and took off their jackets. Without preamble, Sarah grabbed Chuck's arm and pulled him onto the dance floor. The floor was already in motion, all the early-entry beautiful people dancing to the electronic music. Chuck stopped for a moment to gaze at the large, dancing bunny in a suspended cage next to the dance floor. It was obviously someone in a suit, and yet it seemed real. For a moment, no doubt in part because of the day he had been having, Chuck thought he had gone down the rabbit hole. _"I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date!"_

Sarah grabbed his arms and turned him to her. She put one of his hands on each of her hips and began to roll them. She leaned backward, pushing the middle of her body hard against the middle of his. She shook her hair and it seemed to spill, Rapunzel-like, toward the dance floor. Her eyes were closed and her mouth just open, her lips glistening.

Chuck worried about her wound, then he worried about what she must feel as she pressed against him. He started trying to count backward, but made the mistake of starting with _70, _causing him to snag at _69\. _That made matters worse, as did Sarah's continued rolling of her hips. Slowly, ever so slowly, she rose, her eyes dark, burning blue, torches. She smiled at him and pushed her hips forward, harder into him. _Harder. _She gave him that same small grin he had seen before, the one as deep as she was, and it set him ablaze.

He began to move his hips, side-to-side and forward-and-back all at once. Sarah smiled in delight, then leaned back again, her lips parting even more.

Chuck had never danced like that before, never known what it could be to be immersed in the music and in a woman, so immersed that she became both background and foreground, every perspective a fresh perspective on her.

But then Sarah straightened. Her languid smile was gone. Her eyes were hard, intent.

"Don't look around, don't look back. Walk to the rear exit and _do not stop_."

Chuck reacted, obeyed. He found himself in a cold alleyway, the music reduced to a tuneless series of rhythmic thumps.

A few minutes later, just when Chuck had reached for the exit door handle, to see if he could get back inside, Sarah came out the door. Her hair, already mussed in the dance, was wild. Her face was hard, cold. She had one hand in her jacket.

But when she saw Chuck, she smiled, although the smile was graffiti on ruins. "Let's go. Don't run. But we need to get out of here."

As they walked quickly along, Sarah reached out and took Chuck's hand, running her thumb over his knuckles as if continuously assuring herself he was there, real.

Chuck heard sirens in the distance.

ooOoo

Sarah led Chuck on a long, circuitous path back to the Hotel. They stopped often; she checked over her shoulder; she glanced in store windows that reflected the street. She did spy things.

_She is a spy. For the US government. Almost certainly CIA. Good God._

Sarah did not speak until they were back in their room. He flicked on the light. She sat down in the armchair and he saw that her hands were shaking. He moved to her and took her hands on his. "It's okay, Sarah."

"I know. We're safe — again. I just need a minute. The adrenaline. You never really get used to it, to the aftershocks."

Chuck crouched down before her as she had before him earlier. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

She shook her head. "No. Not yet. I need to think. I need to calm down. I need…" She stood and dropped Chuck's hands. "I need to go to bed. It's late anyway…"

Chuck looked at his watch. It was nearly 1: 30 am, twelve hours since he had met her. "That's okay. Can I take a quick shower first?"

She nodded, looking at her hands. "The shaking will stop soon. Nothing to be done but let my system clear. Go ahead."

Chuck grabbed some things from his suitcase then went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He let himself lean against the door, his heated forehead on its cool wood. _How much can one man stand?_

_His world was spinning._

He forced himself to breathe, in and out, in and out. He thought about counting backward again but rejected the idea.

He took off his clothes, unable to remember that morning when he put them on. It seemed an age ago now, shrouded in the mists of time, pre-history.

He climbed under the hot water, so hot it almost scalded him. He stood there, turning red beneath the water, trying to think. But all he could manage was images of Sarah's eyes and the feeling of her hips rolling against his on the dance floor.

He got out and felt guilty. He had been in the shower for longer than he intended. He put on the t-shirt and the PJ bottoms he took out of his suitcase.

Running his fingers through his damp hair, he grimaced at himself in the mirror. _What a day. It hadn't even been a day. What a half of a day. I did not see her coming._

He opened the door and stepped out. Sarah was standing by the bed, waiting for him. She was wearing the lilac lingerie from the shop, nothing else. Chuck instantly loved the bodice, the cut. Before he could think, he moved to her in one long stride and took her in his arms.

_If this is what it is to want a woman, I have never wanted one before. _

Desire outmanned him. He trembled. Felt her tremble. Felt her press herself against him as she had on the dance floor, felt his immediate response, the drumbeat of his pulse, the racing of his blood, the pooling of his consciousness below his waist. She leaned back, not as dramatically as on the dance floor, but with the same result, and he could see nothing but lilac from periphery to periphery. She rose, her eyes so blue that they looked black.

He started to kiss her and she jerked, tensed. He stepped back. She turned away so that he could not see her eyes. "No. Wait. Oh, shit. Chuck, I'm sorry, but I can't…"

She ran into the bathroom, closing the door. He heard it lock.

He plopped down on the bed, adjusting his PJ bottoms, lost. He heard the shower start.

He shook his head at himself, the situation. In his life, he had never slept with a woman he did not know. He had never been willing to share that part of himself with someone who did not care.

_What was I doing? I don't know her._

The shower stopped.

The bathroom door opened. Sarah stepped out. She was still wearing the lilac lingerie, but she was also wearing a gun, wearing it in her hand.

"I'm sorry, Chuck," she said, her eyes damp, steely and steel-blue, as her finger tightened on the trigger. "This is not how I wanted our holiday to end."

* * *

A/N: _Uh-oh_. What _is _going on?

Leave me a response, please. Taking time out of my vacation to spread a little holiday good Charah. Let me know what you think.


	4. Deam Destructumque

A/N: That last chapter, eh? Sheesh. I don't know about you, but I kept hearing Dead or Alive, _You Spin Me Right Round. _A Christmas tizzy.

But I am hoping you knew I wouldn't leave you cliff-hanging for long. When have I ever done that? Here's more story.

— Oh, and remember, I said the movie was _kind _of a giveaway. And there's been that thorny 'Or so it seems' in the story description all along.

* * *

**A Roman Holiday**

Chapter Four: _Deam Destructumque_

* * *

_Sink. Stuck. Stream of consciousness all muddy. _

_Where am I? _

_Who am I?_

…

_Sarah! Sarah, no!_

Chuck sat up, opened his eyes, and his head exploded. He put his hands on the top of his head. "Shit…" He closed his eyes and tried to hold his head together.

He was not a heavy drinker, not even in his college days, but he had managed a few nights of a few too many. Those had been firecracker mornings compared to this mushroom cloud morning.

_Mushroom cloud. __Dr. Strangelove. Major Kong riding The Bomb to destruction. Yaaahooo! and hat-in-hand. Strangelove. Strange love. _

_... _

Morning. _Morning? _

Forgetting the pain in his head, Chuck willed his eyes open. He forced himself to take a deep breath and was swamped by a wave of nausea. He made himself stand up; he started to fall and caught himself on the bed with one hand. Stumbling, muttering, he crossed toward the bathroom. The bedroom was enshadowed but not dark: it was daytime. He flicked on the bathroom light and then leaned on the counter with both hands, his head above the sink, in that horrid no-man's-land between violent nausea and violent puking. Nothing happened.

He lowered his head onto the porcelain edge of the sink, trying to dull the throbbing in his head with its cold.

_Sarah. _Thought finally lurched into motion. Under some kind of control. Sarah. _Last night…_

He exited the bathroom. His bed was made. He had been asleep on the top of it. There was an imprint of his body only, wrinkles in the fabric. He scanned the room. Sarah's things were gone. Her suitcase, her jackets — the new black one, the ruined red one. The bags from the shop, the boxes were still there, the bags folded and in the trash can, the boxes stacked beside it. Chuck inspected them hurriedly. Empty. Nothing. No receipts.

Nothing.

She was gone, absconded, vanished.

_Stella perierunt_.

He revisited the bathroom. The bag of toiletries was there. Chuck checked it, finding the expected items: a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, small bottles of shampoo, conditioner.

The gun. She had come out of the bathroom with a gun. _She shot me!_ Chuck faced the mirror, visually examining himself, running his hands over his body at the same time. He was not shot. No wound.

Nothing.

He went back to the bedroom, opened a curtain. Sunlight speared in, almost tactile. It was not only the daytime, but it was also late morning, nearly midday. Midday. Only then did he think of his watch, look at it. 11: 21 am. He stepped to the bed and leaned over it, examining it. On the bedspread, he saw it: a small dart.

She _had_ shot him but not with a bullet. With a dart. That was why he felt so awful. Drugged. She had tranquilized him.

_Shit. Sarah! _He ran back into the bathroom, forcing himself to breathe, look around slowly, notice. But there was nothing there — nothing, except the watch she had been wearing when she sat down in the _Piazza_, the one with the fractured face. He picked it up. It had been behind his dopp kit. He looked at it closely. The multiple cracks in the crystal made it hard to read the face, but it could be done. He turned it over. No engraving.

It was marked as a Rolex Yacht-Master, a man's size, but Chuck was almost certain it was a fake.

Fake.

Pretend.

_She shot me. _

He put the watch back on the bathroom counter. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked wrecked. He gave himself a bitter smile. "You, Chuck, are _officially_ a moron." The bitter smile was taprooted in his chest pain, his breaking heart.

He washed his face and hands, vigorously drying them, trying to get his blood to move; it felt like it had all clotted in his chest. Feeling empty but still vaguely nauseated, he trudged into the bedroom.

Finally awake, he saw it: there was a piece of hotel stationery on the desk. The brooch was on top of it. Picking it up, he looked at it, remembering the kiss in the restaurant. _Pretend. _He put the brooch down and picked up the paper. In a small, neat-but-hurried hand, a note was written there.

* * *

_C,_

_I'm sorry. _

_I was selfish and sloppy, and I didn't think. It's Christmas and I thought maybe, maybe that would make it okay. _

_Thank you so much for the brooch. You'll not believe me, but I will tell you that having it for my own, even if for just a few hours, was a highlight of my life. _

_At the risk of making you angrier, of making you hate me more, let me say that you _are_ sweet, Chuck. Sweet, Nice, and Cute: Chuck's version of The Good, The True, and The Beautiful. I remember in a college class, those were called The Transcendentals. _

_Forget me. Forget we ever met. Forget our day. Never mention my name to anyone. It's for your safety and the safety of the people you love. _

_I'm very sorry about our final few minutes. I bought it for you, for Christmas, and I had been thinking all evening about seeing you see me in it. _

_Destroy this note once you have read it, then flush the remains. Do that one last thing for me._

_S_

* * *

Chuck picked up his room phone and dialed the concierge desk. As he hoped, Sophia answered.

"Sophia, this is Chuck, Room 564." He knew sounded strange, strangulated.

"Chuck! Hello. — Are you okay?"

"Um...yes. Yeah. Do you have a copy of the paper, the local one?"

"The one in _Italian_, Chuck?"

"Yes, can you bring me a copy right away?"

"Sure, I will bring it myself. Just a moment."

Chuck put the phone down and took a deep breath. He looked at the note, then he went into the bathroom. He read the note one last time, memorizing it. He had always been good at memorizing, soaking things up, retention. _For good and for ill. _ Then, gritting his teeth, he tore the note into small pieces and flushed them.

A knock sounded on the door. "Chuck?"

It was Sophia's voice. He let her in. She gave him a quick, up-and-down glance, then relaxed. She had a paper in her hands. After looking around the room, she faced Chuck, "Where is your...friend? Has she left?"

Chuck did not answer. He sat down on the end of his bed. "That's the paper?"

Sophia nodded.

"Do you have a minute? Can you look at the headlines quickly and let me know. Was there an...incident...at _Rabbit Hole Club _last night?"

Her face showing real concern, she unfolded the paper and began to scan it. She turned the page, once, twice. Then she stopped. In a worried, slow voice, she read: "Knife Fight at Club."

She glanced at Chuck, wide-eyed. He made a small, circular motion with his hand. "Please, Sophia, read it, or just give me the details."

She returned her attention to the paper. "Evidently, a knife fight took place on the dance floor. Two men were stabbed, _killed ..._"

She studied the page. "Witnesses all tell contradictory stories. Some say there was another person involved, a tall man. Others that a woman was involved, although some say she had dark hair, others light."

Sophia looked at Chuck again and then around the room. "Chuck?... Was that woman, your friend, was she..."

"No, Sophia. We were there but we left before...anything happened." He hated himself for lying but he needed to keep his options open. "We heard the sirens…"

"And where is she, Chuck, if I may ask?" Sophia's tone was unsatisfied.

"She...she vanished. She was here last night and gone when I woke up."

A new sort of concern took over Sophia's features. "Did she steal from you, Chuck?" Sophia pointed to the bags and boxes. "Did you buy her things and then she left with them?"

Chuck felt resolve forming inside him. He would do whatever it took to find her. Even if she did not want to be found. Even if she hid — professionally.

"Something like that...yeah. Like you said, _a con_. But I want to find her."

"Why, Chuck? Better to just let...such people go. You've lost money, yes, and...pride, but what is there to find if you find her? She will not return what she has taken."

"Maybe not, but I _need_ to find her."

Sophia's gaze softened. "Oh, I see. She _has_ taken something of real value, hasn't she?"

For the second time, Chuck did not answer.

ooOoo

A coffee beside him and freshly showered, Chuck cracked his knuckles and started work on his computer. He had brought it with him out of force of habit but had hoped to leave it in his suitcase while he enjoyed Rome. He spent — and misspent — far too much time on computers.

But now he needed to use the computer; it would help him think. He started by typing in a timeline, one that began when Sarah sat down at his table. He made himself remember what happened, the unfolding events, the glances he had taken at his watch. When and where. Always who. _Her. _

Timeline finished, he sat back and took a drink of his coffee. A part of him, not a small part, wanted to draw the curtains and curl up on the bed and just _ache. _But he was not going to do it. He needed to know what had happened. _Real _or_ unreal. Real _and_ unreal._

He needed to.

He started noting the times when Sarah had been out of his sight since they met. He marked them on the timeline carefully. There had not been many.

He thought about them, reviewed them.

Something had changed her mind last night. Maybe he misunderstood the nature of her desire for him, but he was sure that was real. Almost sure. No, sure. Almost. The jerk, the sudden change of mind — of heart? — it would have been hard to fake that, even for a spy. She had realized something, been surprised by something. Surprise is hard to fake. He could imagine that spies hated surprises, and he imagined that would be another reason a spy would not like surprises. Hard to fake surprise.

He kept thinking. _The gun_. He had assumed that she had a regular gun in her jacket pocket. But did she? Had there been more than one gun? Where did the dart gun come from if she had not had it all along?

But if she had it all along, what did that suggest about the events that took place _before _she sat down at the _Piazza_? — What had she been doing?

He called Sophia at her desk. "Hey, Sophia. Did you see anything else about...violence...nearby yesterday, say, something during the late morning or early afternoon?"

"No," Sophia said, her tone becoming more concerned. "Chuck, you _need_ to let this go, let _her_ go. Why don't we go somewhere this evening when I am done working? Just friends, get a drink or two or five…"

"Thanks, Sophia, but I...Maybe tomorrow. Do you work on Christmas?"

"Yes, but a half-day. I will call you tomorrow. — Chuck, be careful, please."

A thought struck Chuck. "Sophia, two things, please. Yesterday, my friend, Sarah, spoke to the desk clerk. Can you find out what she said? Also, check the records on my room phone. Have there been any incoming or outgoing calls?"

"Okay, Chuck. I will call you back. The same desk clerk is here now. I can check the records. One day our computer system will be modernized and you will be able to see these things online…"

"Thanks, Sophia." He hung up the phone and paced around in his room, thinking but trying not to direct his thoughts, his feelings, to let them find their own shape, form.

He stopped and stood stock-still. _I love her. I do. I love her. I fell for her in an afternoon, for a woman who is a mystery, a liar. Probably, a killer._

_I did not see her coming._

He let the realization go. It was not going to do him any good to dwell on it now. He would worry about later, later. What was done was done. And Sarah would certainly be gone from Rome soon if she was not already gone. Vanished. Absconded.

His room phone rang.

"Sophia?"

"Yes, so I spoke to Gabriele, ...the desk clerk. He said that...Sarah...asked for toiletries and that she made arrangements for breakfast, room service for two, for today. 'A festive Christmas Eve breakfast,' she said — according to Gabriel. In fact, the staff twice tried to deliver it to your room but got no answer. Also, there are two out-going calls from your room, no incoming calls. One out-going outgoing call was made yesterday afternoon, and I recognize the number — Antonio's restaurant. The other was at 1:36 am today."

"Is there any way to find out where that call went?"

"I should say _no, _Chuck, for many reasons," she was speaking softly into the phone, "but I have an old boyfriend who works for _Telecom Italia Tim_. He...he would be...willing to help me."

"I know it's a lot to ask but…"

Silence.

"Okay, Chuck, I will call him."

"Thanks, Sophia."

Chuck put down the phone, then looked at the timeline on his computer. That call was made while he was in the shower before he came out to find Sarah in...the lingerie. He screwed his eyes shut, as if that would darken the image of her in his mind.

The truth was — and he knew it — he would almost certainly never see her again.

He sat back down, trying to make himself calm down. He drank more of his coffee, monitored his breathing.

"Chuck?" A knock, and Sophia's voice.

He got up and let her in. She had a scrap of paper in her hand. "My old boyfriend...he came through. The call was to a landline in the Trullo district. In the western part of the city. Not the safest of places. I had a thought, and I asked him to check emergency calls from the area last night. An ambulance was called at around 4 am, a mile or two from the address. A blonde woman was found unconscious on the street, badly beaten. The ambulance was from this hospital…"

She handed Chuck the piece of paper with the name of the hospital below the Trullo phone number. "Chuck, I...don't like this. Let me caution you again. Let this go. Let her go."

Chuck shook his head. "I can't. Thanks. I...I'll live with the consequences."

She gave him a long, soft look, shook her head, and left. He grabbed his jacket and left the Hotel. He flagged down a cab once he was on the street.

"Do you speak English?"

The driver nodded.

"Good. Holy Spirit Hospital, please."

ooOoo

Chuck stood in the hospital room. It was not a private room; there were two other beds, occupied. Other patients, families, talking. Hers, her bed, Sarah's, was in the middle. Alone. There were curtains running around both sides, and only a tiny opening between them. Chuck was standing in that small opening.

Sarah was in the bed before him. She was broken.

Beaten. Her bottom lip was split in several places, her eyes black. She had a deep cut on one cheek, stitched closed, a wound likely to leave at least a faint scar. Her arms, outside the blue blanket that otherwise covered her, were dark with bruises, violent with scrapes, cuts.

The knuckles on her hands, both hands, were raw. Her eyes were closed. She was asleep.

Chuck walked in and closed the curtain behind him. The sound woke her. He saw her open her eyes, blink, look. She started to smile and then stopped.

"Chuck? Chuck? What the hell are you doing here?" Her voice, low, was thick and raspy. He saw bruises on her long neck. She was looking around the room, at the corners, the ceiling.

He kept his voice low too. "I found you. I had to find you. My God, Sarah, what happened to you?"

"Chuck, please leave. Tell me you didn't give anyone here your name?"

"No. And I didn't give yours. I described you to them and told them I was your boyfriend. I was upset enough — they believed me. They think you are someone named _Ann. _Ann Carol."

"That's the name on the credit cards they found on me. The name I told them was mine when I first woke up."

"Sarah...Ann...Are you okay?"

Her eyes darkened at the two names and she moved uncomfortably. "Yes, I need to rest. I'll be sore for a while, but nothing is broken. Fortunes of war. Now, you've seen me. —Did you get my note?"

"Yes."

"So, _go_, Chuck, now. Now." She pointed at the spot he had come in. "Leave."

"But, Sarah, I...I have to know. What happened between us?"

Sarah glanced away from him. "Nothing, Chuck."

"But your note…"

She sighed heavily, almost a sob, still looking away from him. When she finally faced him, her eyes were as pale as he had ever seen them, perhaps in contrast with the purple bruising around them. "Chuck," she began, her voice hardening, "leave. Leave this hospital and _don't look back_."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

She sighed again, her voice hardening still more. "Yes. I tried to...let you down easy with that note, Chuck, but it was a lie too. You just got caught up in something...you're _collateral damage_. Nothing that happened between us yesterday was real, Chuck. Nothing. — Look at you, Chuck. A Buy More manager abroad. Do you really think I…Did you?" She laughed scornfully.

"Sarah…"

"Chuck, I am what I am. I do what I do. I'm going...back to work...as soon as I am able. You meant — and you mean — _nothing _— to me. Do you understand that? Go back to your hotel. Enjoy the city. Go home and have a great, normal life. Marry some real girl and have kids with her. Chalk this up as a learning experience. Don't be naive, Chuck. Finding me here just means that you forfeited the illusion I hoped to leave with you…Lies, that note, and a stupid act of kindness, out of character..."

"But Sarah…"

She pointed again. "Go!"

He looked at her eyes, so light blue, blue ice on snow. She was lying to him. He was sure.

Almost. No, he was sure.

Almost.

But she, even so, — she was deliberately _lying to him. _She was _choosing to tell_ him these lies. She wanted him to go, to go, to go while believing these lies. He could feel that she was desperate for him to leave. She was afraid. For him. For him to be there. For him to be there with her.

"Chuck, go. For your own good. The good of the people you care about..."

Her arm was still extended. Chuck took hold of it gently. Her eyes went dark, a wave of complicated anger, in response. He opened the clasp on his new watch. He took it off his wrist and put it on hers, cinching the heavy black band snug, a trick with one hand, but he managed it. He put her arm down.

She brought her wrist close to her, staring at the watch face. She looked up at him, Prussian blue pain.

"I love you, Sarah, ...Ann...Sarah. It makes no sense but _there it is_. I love you. I just needed you to know. I'd never forgive myself for not telling you when I had the chance. — Keep the watch, please. A spy needs a reliable timepiece. At least that's the impression I get from movies and novels. Remember me, please, from time to time."

She looked down at the watch again. "I _won't_, Chuck."

He pulled the curtains apart, glanced back at her, sighed. "I won't remember you, either."

Closing the curtains, he stepped out of her life.

* * *

A/N: Is this progress? Cliffhanger to heartache?

One final chapter to go. Unless something untoward happens, you will have it well before Christmas.

Remember me with a review or comment, please.

And, if you haven't read them yet, I have two other Christmas stories of which I am proud, _A Year Without Christmas? _and _Red and Green. _Each is its own sort of thing, but each is a Christmassy thing. There are several other fun Christmas tales being written now. Enjoy!


	5. Verum Est, Blue

A/N: And so, the end of this story and the end of my Christmas stories. Promise!

* * *

**A Roman Holiday**

Chapter 5: _Verum Est_, Blue

* * *

December 23rd  
The office of _Metamorphoses Software  
_Burbank, California

* * *

Ellie Bartowski — _no, no, Ellie_ _Woodcomb_, Chuck reminded himself — blew out a breath and put her booted feet on Chuck's desk. His sister married Devon Woodcomb (_finally!_) in late August. She was still beaming about it and it made Chuck feel good, even if it also cost him some melancholy.

He had been dreading Christmas, dreading this day, Christmas Eve Eve, and Ellie, intuiting his mood, had taken him out to breakfast. They had stuffed themselves on pancakes and were now sitting in Chuck's office, nursing to-go coffees their waitress had insisted they take. Ellie had a hospital shift coming up, but it was not until later, and she seemed content to spend time with her little brother, the boy she had more-or-less raised after their parents died. Her husband, a cardiac surgeon, was already on-shift at the hospital. He would come home around the time Ellie left. Doctors, crazy hours.

"So, Chuck," Ellie said, "there's this new CNA at the hospital. She's been working with some of my patients for a while. She's _nice_…_cute..._"

"Ellie," Chuck said, doing his best not to sound impatient, he knew she meant well, "we've tried this before. I'm not interested in dating. You have great taste, but we've tried this and it doesn't work. I'm just too...busy."

"Chuck," Ellie said, elongating the vowel sound in his name, "I know the problem is not business. The problem was...is...that Roman holiday." Ellie put her feet down and leaned toward Chuck, her serious concern showing on her face. "You've never been the same since you got home, Chuck. Some of the changes I applaud. Canning the Buy More, starting this place, working like crazy to make something of it in less than a year. Getting your own apartment. All good changes, Chuck, and, well, too long in coming. But there's a shadow following you around, a shadow on your heart, and you won't tell me what it is, why it is. But I know it happened in Rome. What did that city do to you, little brother?"

Chuck blew out a breath of his own. He rotated all the way around in his desk chair, just to get a moment away from Ellie's penetrating gaze. She saw too much, his sister. As his chair turned, Chuck looked at the photo on the wall behind his desk, the only photograph in his office. After leaving Sarah, and before leaving Rome, he had gone through Trastevere and taken photographs of the places they had been together. He had been able to go to Antonio's restaurant one morning, before it opened, and take a picture of the table he and Sarah sat at when they had dinner. The photograph had turned out well, the morning sun lighting up the yellow-checked tablecloth, the ochre walls. The chairs were empty.

Chuck had lost a lot of time gazing at the picture since he took the offices and hung the enlarged photograph in July. It was fair to say that a part of him was still at that table, with her, in Rome.

He had done as she asked. He left the hospital and he did not go back. He spent the rest of his holiday in Rome walking aimlessly around the city. A couple of times, he had coffee with Sophia — but only because she insisted. She thought he needed company, and perhaps he did, but he knew he was company of the lousiest sort. He still heard from her once in a while, and she had invited him back to Rome, even offered a room at the Hotel, but he could not face the city. It was, it would always be, the city where he found and lost himself in a day, where he had learned how long a day could be, and how significant.

The ache had lessened but it was not gone and he did not expect it to ever leave. She crossed his mind often. He rarely went to sleep without seeing her in his mind. He did not try to find her. He heard nothing from her, nothing of her.

Nothing.

He rotated all the way back around to face Ellie again. She smirked at him, and he could hear her thinking: _Coward. _His swivel chair let him run from her while in one place.

He hated dodging Ellie, keeping this from her — but his final memory of Sarah, badly beaten and frightened for him, kept him from sharing any of it. Maybe that made it worse, made it harder to forget Sarah, bottling her and his memories of her up inside him, but it was what he felt he had to do.

He glanced at the small globe he kept on his desk. When he was pensive but not looking at the _Trattoria _photograph, he would idly spin the globe, wondering where on it she might be, afraid that she might _not_ _be. _He knew all-too-well how dangerous her life was.

"Chuck," Ellie said, giving the globe he was staring at a spin, "stop ignoring me. Are you ever going to tell me what happened over there?"

"Nothing, Ellie. Nothing happened. Believe me. I just...made some decisions. Decided that I needed to stop living a life and start leading one. As they say, you know, march to the beat of my own drummer."

Ellie frowned. "My little drummer boy." She huffed. "Okay, but Chuck, I'm here. And if you don't meet anyone, that CNA…She's a _brunette_ and she seems sweet."

"No, Ellie. No."

"Okay, I assume you're going to join us for Christmas?"

"Of course, I'm looking forward to it."

"Bring someone, Chuck. — And I don't mean Morgan."

"He's going to be with his mom. They're making up for last year when she was sick."

"That's good news, twice over."

"Oh, c'mon, Ellie. Morgan's like a Labrador — he's loyal."

"Yes, but unlike most Labs, he isn't housebroken."

Chuck dropped his head, shaking it. "He's better now."

"That's what you always say, Chuck, and then he comes to our house…"

"I know, I know."

They both laughed. Ellie grabbed her jacket and swung it on. "I love you, Chuck. Try to find a little of the festive spirit of the season. Don't sit in here, working all day. Take a walk. Do something. Don't brood. You've been brooding for a calendar year. — By the way, what time is it, Chuck?"

Chuck looked at his watch. He squinted.

"Chuck, why do you insist on wearing that watch? I know it runs; you told me. But it's illegible, unreadable. It's such a shame you managed to lose the one I bought you. No one at that hotel in Rome ever found it?"

"Um...No, never did. Maybe I left it somewhere else."

"You could just put a clock on the wall."

"I keep meaning too. It's 10:25, by the way. — Ok, Sis. I'll get out of here, take a walk, something. Promise."

Ellie nodded and left. Chuck sat and watched through the door as she walked away.

Chuck spun his chair again and looked at the photograph. It turned out that Chuck had been missing something after Sarah left his hotel room. His Stanford sweatshirt. She must have taken it, but that she had remained a riddle to Chuck. Why had she taken it but not kept the brooch? He had given her the latter but only lent her the former. He hoped she kept it because she had been lying to him about their holiday meaning nothing to her and about him meaning nothing to her.

She had been lying to him at the end. He believed he knew she was lying. But he did not know why. Maybe she even knew that he knew she was lying.

He made himself stop. He had tied himself in late-night knots of _What if she knew that I knew that she knew that I…_

She said she would not think of him, but she kept the watch. She took his sweatshirt. It all had meant something to her. Not enough. Not as much as it had meant to him. But — not _nothing_.

He recalled a moment, back at the end of August, just after Ellie's wedding, when he had seen Sarah. Thought he had seen her. Outside, on the street.

But the woman, tall and lovely with blue eyes, had red hair. She carried herself the wrong way. He had known she was not Sarah because she had actually come into the office and talked with Chuck about his company. The woman worked for an artsy Burbank magazine and had been considering an article on small local businesses.

She had called him a couple of days later, disappointed, to tell him that the magazine had decided against the article. He had not banked on it and so he had not been as disappointed as she was, and not nearly as disappointed as he was when she had gotten to the door of the office and he recognized she was not Sarah.

After that, Chuck had tried to uproot the hope he still had that he might see her again. It was time to move on. It had been time to move on for a long time. Maybe he had given up hope, but he had not moved on.

Ellie was right. He needed to move on. Stop remembering Sarah.

_I won't, Ellie._

"_I won't, Chuck" — Sarah said when he asked her to remember. She was lying. He was sure._

"_I won't remember you, either" — Chuck said. She knew he was lying._

_He knew. _

ooOoo

Christmas day came.

Chuck had done what Ellie asked. He shut _Metamorphoses _down at lunchtime on the 23rd. He went to Echo Park Lake and took a walk.

His business was making strides. He had hired a computer science student from UCLA, a girl named Alex McHugh, as a part-timer. A game he had been working on had been picked up by one of the big commercial gaming services, and he had created a couple of phone apps that were making money. It had been enough to allow him to add Alex. She was great and they had become friends. _Metamorphoses _was not making him rich but it was paying the bills, he had some savings. He had enough.

He had chosen the name because of Sarah, of course. He did not choose the Kafka name but the Ovid name. He rarely said it or wrote it without wondering why it mattered to her, why she had intruded it into the conversation with Sophia that day.

His walk had been good. He had dinner with Morgan at a dumplings place and then he went home. He stayed there all day on Christmas Eve, remembering.

But he shook off the brooding and put on some PJs and a jacket, and drove the short distance to his sister's place. He walked past the fountain and rang the doorbell. Ellie opened the door to him, and he heard Devon's voice from inside: "Chuckster!"

Ellie was in PJs too, a family tradition. Christmas was a comfort day, a feelings day, a family day. Chuck was looking forward to it. Ellie gave him a hug and he came inside. She shut the door. She had not spoken, and Chuck realized she had a guilty look on her face.

"Ellie?..."

"Chuck, don't be mad. I invited the CNA I mentioned, the one from the hospital, to join us. I didn't bill it as any kind of date, though we've talked about you. I asked because she's sweet and she seems lonely. So, no pressure; she's not expecting anything. Just be nice. Be you."

Chuck inhaled and exhaled, shaking his head. Ellie shook hers. "Don't be a drama queen, Chuck. It's not that hard. Her name's Carol. She's in the bathroom, I think. She was helping me make the fresh OJ, and some juice squirted on her glasses."

Ellie gave Chuck a what-can-you-do smirk and shrug and went into the kitchen where Chuck could hear Devon tunelessly humming some Christmas song.

Chuck walked over to the tree to examine it more closely. He had not been over since Ellie put it up. He considered the ornaments one by one, many handmade by himself or Ellie, made back when they could afford no real ornaments.

He was annoyed with Ellie. Mildly. _At least it's not a surprise blind date. _Still, he had been looking forward to just Ellie and Devon. He had not prepared himself for a stranger. He heard the bathroom door open in the hallway and he sighed. He turned around.

The woman, Carol, had dark — black — short hair. She wore brown, tortoise-shell glasses, a blue blouse.

And she was Sarah.

The apartment started spinning one way, Chuck's head another. Time compressed, stretched. His heart did something that disobeyed the laws of physics and psychology simultaneously.

Sarah...Carol...glanced toward the kitchen. No one was watching. She moved to Chuck. She was waiting for something but he was too far out of his body to react.

Finally, his mouth moved. He whispered: "Sarah?"

She put her finger on his lips. "Carol."

"Carol…?"

She nodded. "Carol Smith." Behind the uncertainty in her dark blue gaze, he detected a hint of self-mockery, humor.

"Smith, of course."

Carol then spoke in a normal tone. "You must be Ellie's brother, Chuck. I'm Carol." She put out her hand and Chuck took it and the counter-directional spinning slowed.

"Yeah, yeah, that's me. Chuck. Merry Christmas, Carol." Chuck stopped, laughed, as Ellie and Devon turned to watch. "You must get that a lot, this time of year."

"Less than you think," Carol said, laughing in return. Carol turned to face Ellie and Devon. "I'd like to look at the fountain. Do you think that would be okay?"

Ellie looked puzzled but she nodded. "Um, sure. Chuck, could you take her out?"

"Sure," Chuck said, feeling the same sudden apprehension he thought he saw in Carol's eyes.

He had not taken off his jacket. Carol picked up hers from the back of the sofa. It was the same black leather jacket she bought in Rome. But beneath her black hair and glasses, it seemed different. She seemed different. It was not just the hair and glasses and a new name. The weariness seemed to be gone. There was a wariness in her, but Chuck felt that in himself too.

He felt so many things; he had no idea how to sort them.

They left the apartment and went to stand beside the fountain. Carol looked at it for a moment, and Chuck stood beside her, waiting. He felt like he had been waiting for a year.

"Sarah...Carol...How? You _work _at the hospital?"

She nodded without looking at him. "Yes, since October."

"October?"

She glanced at Chuck nervously, nodded once.

"You've been here since _October_?"

She shook her head, blushing. "No, since...August."

The spinning started again. Chuck sank down onto the edge of the fountain. He put his face in his hands. "Months, Sarah...Carol, months. You've been here for months?"

She crouched down in front of him and he flashed back to Rome. Before she could speak, he went on, the words tumbling out of the long loneliness inside him, the endless missing of her. "Months. You could have come to me at any time. I get it, if you aren't interested in...us; I was never completely sure, but you could have...put me out of my misery."

Carol's eyes were dark, damp. "I couldn't come to you, Chuck."

He braced himself. "Were you hurt?"

"No, Chuck. I had to…"

"What?"

"I had to know whether you still wanted me. And I had to know...I had to know I could be a...real girl. Live a normal life."

Chuck shook his head, trying to quiet the buzzing in it, in his heart. "How could you know I still wanted you?"

She blushed again. He realized she looked younger again, as she had during their day together. "Spy, remember?"

"No, S— Carol, I don't. You never actually said, remember?"

"Yes, Chuck, I do. You're right. _You_ said. When you gave me this." She pulled back the sleeve of her jacket, her blue blouse, and on her arm was the Glycine watch he had given her. It was scuffed and battered but still intact, perfectly legible. "It's been on me almost continuously since you gave it to me. It is reliable like you said."

Chuck smirked bitterly. "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking..."

She responded automatically, clearly without reflecting, smirking without bitterness. "Licking?"

Chuck gave his head a shake. "So, how did you know...I still wanted...want...you?"

"An old colleague of mine, a friend, Carina, she paid you a visit."

"Wait, tall, red hair?"

"Yes."

"So, she wasn't a magazine writer."

Carol laughed softly. "Hardly. She works undercover for the DEA. We worked together when I was still CIA. She came to town to help me...settle. I sent her to check on you, your business. She described your office, the photograph above your desk…"

"Oh."

"And, I was there, at Ellie's wedding, on the beach."

"You were? Where? I would have seen you." Chuck could not seem to catch up.

"No, I wasn't _there_...not that way. I was off in the distance. Binoculars. But I saw. I was happy for her, for you. I could tell how happy you were for her. But I could also see that you were...sad. I was sad too."

Chuck huffed, he stood up. He walked away from her a few paces. "Sarah…"

"Carol…"

"Help me understand. You _were _CIA?"

She nodded. "And you _want _me?"

Chuck put up his hand. "We will get to that. Start here. LA. Why did you come to LA?"

"After I quit the CIA, after my final missions, I changed identities. I didn't want to be...that woman anymore. Didn't want that name, to be that woman. I dropped out of sight for a few weeks while I re-established my identity. I was in Barcelona for a while, in Nice," — she laughed — "it made me think of you, Nice, but everything did. Once I was sure that Sarah Walker had...vanished...Carol Smith appeared. I came here for me...and for you. I got settled with Carina's help. I had money, that wasn't a problem. Spies...manage their own retirement funds. And I sold my car. But I needed work, meaningful work, work that I could do," she glanced at her hands, "clean work, helpful work." She walked to him and put her hands in his.

"Not long after I got here, I saw a sign at a community center near my apartment. The Red Cross was running a course for Certified Nursing Assistants. I enrolled. I excelled."

Chuck gave her hands a squeeze. "No surprise."

She looked at him — surprised, navy eyes. "Really?"

"One thing I do not doubt...Carol. Is your _competence._" He let go of her hands. "And so you got the job at the hospital. Did you know Ellie worked there?"

"Yes, but I applied to lots of places. I just got the best offer there. And I didn't go looking for Ellie; she found me. I was helping with one of her patients and she saw my watch. She mentioned that she gave her brother one, but that he lost it in Rome. — It was a strange moment. We started chatting after that, and she started telling me about you, about how changed you've been since Rome, about _Metamorphoses. _She's been torn, so proud of you and so worried about you, you know."

"Yeah, I've felt sort of the same way about me."

She looked at him. "So…"

"So, Rome." Chuck said. "What about Rome? Tell me about what happened, Carol."

Carol turned away. Chuck saw her shoulders sink. Then, he saw her brace herself. She turned to him and he could see the tenseness in her. The wracked look from Rome had revisited her.

She sighed. "In for a dime, in for a dollar, as they say." She gave him a brief, effort-filled smile. "Rome was all a fake, Chuck."

Chuck took a step backward.

"No, not all fake, Chuck, but mostly...Shit."

"Just tell me, Carol. Sarah. Ann. Just tell me."

"It started before you came to Rome, for me — and for you. I had a partner three years ago or so, a CIA partner. Shaw, that was his name. Dan Shaw. He was a good spy. We eventually became more than partners." She glanced at Chuck. "That didn't last for very long. He started acting strange, erratic. Then he vanished. My superiors first thought he had gone rogue, joined an international terrorist organization called Fulcrum. Well-funded, very professional. After a while, they thought he was dead. I did not know what to think. My feelings for him were not what I thought they were. I went on working, alone. But then, last October, he made contact with me. Brief, furtive contact, but enough for me to know he was still alive. We met. I guess he thought we would pick up where we left off, but I told him that was not possible. You see, by then, I had grown tired of it all, Chuck, a deep-in-the-bones exhaustion that I could not shake. And it was like...like the job had rotted all around me, from the inside; I didn't want to do it anymore. But I thought I was...a lifer. Too far in, too far gone, to get back out. I thought I was dead — inside. That I was just waiting for the outside to catch up to the inside, for me to rot from the inside, like my job."

She turned and watched the water in the fountain for a moment, hugging herself. Chuck fought down his immediate urge to hold her.

She turned back around. "I'm sorry, Chuck. Speeches aren't my thing. Not story-telling either." She rubbed her hands on her crossed arms. "So, I met with Shaw. By that time, he had been labeled 'Rogue', so meeting with him was dangerous in all sorts of ways, but I felt so little, so numb, but I guess I had a certain...loyalty...if nothing else...to him. I kept the meeting off-the-books."

"Shaw claimed he was running an elaborate triple-cross. He had stolen a computer from a Fulcrum lab. It had some kind of special AI program on it, and the computer itself was special. Unique. The program could only be stored, run, on that particular computer. But the program was a way of moving vast quantities of data, like the accumulated data of the CIA and the NSA, the intelligence data of the US, into a human mind. But the...transfer...required a mind as unique...as the computer.

"Shaw had also managed to access old CIA files, files in which were stored the results of tests run on college campuses across the country, back when the CIA made an — it turns out, quixotic — run on the same technology. They could never get it to work and so they buried the results, turned their attention to new projects. But Shaw realized they had been testing for what he needed. It turned out that what he needed was you, Chuck. You took the test in a psych course at Stanford and you scored higher on it that anyone across the country who took it, a lot higher."

Chuck shook his head. "Wait, I remember taking that test…I never understood why. I almost reported it to the Stanford Institutional Review Board. It felt like I was part of some experiment, but never told that I was…"

"Your instincts were right."

Chuck shook his head again. "So, wait, you knew about me _before _Rome?"

She nodded but with no conviction. "I had been _told about you_ before Rome."

"So…?"

"So, Shaw explained the basics of all this to me and convinced me — God, I was such an idiot and in such a dark place — he convinced me that his ticket back into the CIA's good graces was you. You, augmented with that program. So, he blackmailed a Buy More Corporate officer into a sham contest for a Rome trip. He wanted you out of the country, away from friends and family, isolated, — and he made sure your store 'won'. — By the way, I guess your store really did win, but you'd have gotten the trip even if it hadn't. And he manipulated the details to make sure you came alone.

"He talked me into running an off-the-books 'seduction'. I was to meet you, make you fall for me, and then take you to him. You see, along with the computer he stole from Fulcrum, he also stole a notebook, one that belonged to the scientist who designed the program. I have no idea how Fulcrum got them. The scientist had been convinced that there was no one who could successfully 'house' the program. But he had stressed that the program was unlikely to work in anyone unless it was...downloaded willingly. My job was that 'willingly'; I was to see to it that you would be willing. That's why I met you the way I did, why I more-or-less told you what I was early on, to begin to...acclimate...you."

Chuck began to feel sick, angry. He turned from her. "'Seduction'? So you were going to sleep with me to make me...willing...to be this Shaw's...guinea pig?"

"I didn't intend to sleep with you. I actually already had a room reserved at the Hotel but under an alias. I intended to make you want to sleep with me, to make you want that...a lot."

"And this was, like, a _normal _part of your spy life. Using...yourself to make men...willing, promising sex, enticing them?"

She did not speak but she nodded.

"So, that's all Rome was, a seduction?" Chuck could hear the finality in his voice and he saw it register in Carol's eyes. He could see her reel, see her eyes cycle through shades of blue before darkening again.

"Yes — and no."

"I don't understand." Chuck looked at her.

"I didn't either," Carol admitted with a bitter grin. "Shaw had access to extensive psych reports on you, many gathered in that same psych class in which you were given the CIA test. He thought the best way to seduce you was not any obvious come-on, but by making you feel needed. That's why we staged the _Piazza _as we did."

"Staged?" Chuck hissed. "You didn't stage that cut, that wound, that blood."

"No, and yes. The cut was surely real. But Shaw did it to me. I let him. He cut and tore the jacket"

"Jesus Christ…Sarah..."

"Carol..." She shrugged. "Dead inside, remember. I should never have gone along with it all but I just felt like nothing mattered anymore. Doing what Shaw wanted, as twisted as it was, seemed like helping him...I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking, what I believed. Maybe that was the problem, maybe I didn't believe anything anymore."

She kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk, somehow making it hop off the edge of the fountain and plunk in the water. Chuck shook his head in disbelief.

"Yes — and No?" Chuck finally asked.

"Shaw gave me until the day after Christmas to run the 'seduction'. He was confident, I was confident, that would be enough time. And then I actually met you, and you let me lean on you and you talked to me, and I knew that Shaw had not told me about the real you, but about some version of you he'd concocted in his head, staring at your files. He claimed you were a dud, a lemon, 'once-promising, now embarrassing'. That you were...nothing...in and of yourself, that you were just a strangely receptive and retentive brain…"

"Wow, talk about a weird form of objectification…"

Carol grimaced. "I know. And I believed it until you touched me, until you bandaged me. And, suddenly, I was feeling things. I hadn't felt anything, good or bad, in forever, but your hand on my side, it...reanimated me, from the outside-in."

"So, it wasn't a 'seduction'?"

"No — and Yes. I decided to let later wait for later, to decide what I would do, and I decided to spend Christmas with you for real."

"For real, while you were on a seduction mission? — Wait, and that's why you had the guilty looks, why you kept harping on Ovid, _Ars Amatoria. _'Seduction'."

"Yes, things kept happening that would not let me do what I wanted to do, just forget why I was there and enjoy a few days with a good man, a holiday with a good man. To feel good myself."

Chuck walked right up to her. "But if it wasn't...exactly...a seduction, why the lilac lingerie?"

Carol's face burned. "That, Chuck, was a purely personal matter between you and me. It had nothing to do with my profession, or with Shaw. I wanted to sleep with you. I wanted you to want me, and I wanted to want you back — and I did — just as Chuck and Carol...Sarah. That lingerie was just for the two of us."

"But you were still in effect going through with Shaw's plan. Whatever your motives...I would still have ended up Shaw's guinea pig, but even more fully under your control. Shaw would have been delighted."

She looked down, unable to hold his gaze. "I know. I kept going back and forth, torn, feeling so much, and wanting to feel more, but dreading the passage of time, the inevitable end…"

"Shit, Carol. How is there any way back from this for us? What you did, what you were willing to do to me?"

She raised her eyes again, her chin set, defiant. "But Chuck, you have to understand, maybe not forgive, but understand. I was so confused. I kept telling myself that what was happening to me was temporary. That I wouldn't keep feeling that way. That I wouldn't keep feeling at all. That I would revert to...me, the old me...from the woman with you, the new me."

"Is that supposed to make it okay...Carol?"

She blew out a breath, closed her eyes. "No, Chuck. Nothing is supposed to make it okay. I'm here hoping for understanding, forgiveness, not exculpation. I was what I was; I did what I did."

"So, what did you do? Why didn't you sleep with me? Why shoot me, tranquilize me?"

Carol took off her glasses. "At the club, I saw two men watching us, no watching you. When I am dancing, it is...unusual for men to be focused on the man I am dancing with."

Chuck laughed in spite of his anger. "I get that."

She went on. "I became sure they were Fulcrum. I approached them and they gave themselves away. I...dealt with them in the confusion of the dance floor."

_Dealt. _"Okay…"

"I got you away safely. And I realized how terrified for you I was. Genuinely terrified. And I knew that I couldn't give you up. I thought we still had a couple of days to figure it out, to find a way for us to run. And, I wanted to be with you so much by then. I had wanted you since you touched my side. I was burning for you on the dance floor. Crazy burning." She had a far-away look in her eyes, but spoke with no self-consciousness.

"I was going to sleep with you, started to sleep with you, when I suddenly remembered...one of the men from the club; I had seen him before. At the time, I had taken him for a generic Fulcrum operative, unconnected to Shaw. But I recalled that I had seen him a couple of years before, talking to Shaw, not long before Shaw vanished. And then I suddenly knew. Shaw was playing me. He had stolen the computer, the program, the notebook from Fulcrum, but he was going to use you as his power play in Fulcrum, to assume its leadership. You were his secret. No one else knew. My gut told me it was true. He was using me, a CIA agent, to create Fulcrum's ultimate weapon, you. I'm not sure how he was going to use you exactly. Maybe he had a plan for getting to the US intelligence data, who knows, but that was what he was going to do. The main thing was to rise in Fulcrum."

Her eyes flashed and he could feel anger in her. "I had the tranq gun as a failsafe for the seduction. I was sloppy about that gun, I know. You felt it in my jacket pocket.

"I should have realized then that I was...a goner. That's a mistake that Sarah — that she did not make. I shot you to protect you, to make sure I had time to stop Shaw, to make sure you wouldn't get involved. — You see, to clear a path for running, I had called Shaw from the room while you were in the shower. He was at the safe house. I told him that you were asleep and that all was going to plan. So, I knew where he was."

"I had a regular gun stashed near the Hotel, and some other items. I gathered them and headed to Trullo." She looked at Chuck. "My plan was to kill him. Shaw. It was the only way to protect you. If he didn't get you in Rome, he'd have kept coming, come to Burbank, used Ellie or Devon or Morgan against you."

"But Shaw suspected me. I was sneaking toward a window of the safehouse when a guard found me, got the jump on me. Again, I was sloppy. I had never been...motivated like I was then, the job had never been...personal. He took me inside. I broke his grip on me and I fought with him and Shaw."

"Hold on. It was just you against two men, professional spies."

She gave him a sneaky grin. "It wasn't fair — to them. But it was closer than I expected. I...killed the guard, but Shaw knocked me out. When I came to, he started demanding that I tell him about you, what had happened. It was clear he was going to kill me. He kept choking me, taking me almost to the point of blacking out, then releasing me, demanding answers. I worked the knot in the rope free and sprang on him. We fought. I managed to get to one of my knives and I stabbed him. I got up, I took the computer and I smashed it and smashed it and smashed it, then I burned the notebook. I was close to losing consciousness. I managed to get a few blocks away before I passed out."

"My God, Carol, you did all that to protect me?"

She nodded. "When I pretend, Chuck, I really _pretend_." She gave him a guilty smile.

"Yes, Miss Smith, you do. Or is it _Ms_. or _Mrs_. Smith?"

She gave him that deep grin she had given him in Rome, the one as deep as she was. "Oh, it's 'Miss', and 'Smith' is really just a place-holder."

Chuck matched her grin with a surprised grin of his own.

The apartment door opened. "Are you two going to be out here all morning?" Ellie asked, her exasperation largely faked. She was wearing a happy smile at finding them talking so seriously.

"No, we'll be in soon. Carol was just telling me...some of her life story."

Ellie waved her hand. "It can be reheated. Breakfast. Talk as long as you want." She went back inside, smiling proudly.

"But if you did all that for me, then why not tell me? Why do to me what you did at the hospital?" Chuck asked, immediately shifting his whole focus back to Carol.

"Because — although I believed Shaw's project was unknown to Fulcrum and to the CIA, I couldn't be sure. I was connected to him. I had to let you go, make you go. I didn't want you connected to him through me. For all I knew, it was possible there were other Fulcrum agents in Rome, like the ones at _Rabbit Hole Club_, who might have seen you with me. I couldn't risk it, couldn't risk you. After you left the hospital, I left too. I couldn't stay, not with the fake IDs I had used. I got a room, bought some painkillers, some make-up, and I made sure that no one was watching you, tailing you."

"Except you."

She shrugged. "Our day, Chuck, Rome, it didn't mean nothing to me. So help me God, it meant _everything_. I couldn't, I still haven't recovered. Not one bit."

Chuck stole a glance at Ellie's. No one was looking out the window. He put his hands on Carol's shoulders and leaned into her gaze, the endless, dark blue of her eyes, and he kissed her softly. "Me, either. — It's good to know you, Carol Smith."

"And you too, Chuck Bartowski of the Burbank Bartowskis."

"Speaking of," Chuck said, removing his hands from Carol's shoulders, "we'll have to take this slow. It's already going to be a problem…"

Carol gave him a look. "Can't keep your lips off me?" They were walking to Ellie's door.

"That, and living with Ellie's self-satisfaction in being right about you. She said you were nice and cute and sweet."

"The middling Trinity?" Sarah asked, stopping, raising one eyebrow and putting on her glasses.

"No," Chuck answered, taking her hand and kissing it, "The Transcendentals."

She gripped his arm with her other hand. "You're wearing my watch!"

"Takes a licking and keeps on ticking."

"It still works?"

Chuck nodded. "It kept me company while I was waiting."

She gave him an amazing smile, her eyes darkening almost to black. "Licking?"

* * *

Carol stood looking at the Christmas tree. Their tree, hers and Chuck's. In their new apartment. Theirs.

She ran her hand down the front of her sweatshirt, over the Stanford _S_, over the slight bump of her still-early pregnancy.

On that awful day in the hospital, in Rome, she had told Chuck to find a real girl and marry her and have kids. She had no idea then that she was foretelling her own future.

The first few months with Chuck had been magical, but also, at times, touch and go. They had a lot to learn about each other, and much that she had to teach Chuck about herself was not pleasant for either of them. But he never wavered, never faltered, never failed her, even through the painful times. Those were rarer now. Their days were almost all good.

She loved her job and felt like she was giving back, helping. Doing real good for real people. She and Chuck eloped late in August. She had found out she was pregnant early in October. Ellie knew soon after, and therefore, so did Devon. But she had not made it public at work yet, and neither had Chuck.

They would do that after the holidays.

At the moment, Sarah was enjoying it as the family's secret. It was the only kind of secret she was interested in keeping now. Her past remained a secret, still, to protect her husband.

It had taken her time to build Chuck's trust in her. Despite the speed and intensity of their reunion — she smiled and flushed thinking about last Christmas, after they left Ellie's and met again at Chuck's — it had taken time for him to believe that she was really there, was really staying, that Rome had meant as much to her as it had to him, twelve hours or not.

That was her one other secret. She had tried to tell it, but she lacked the words. Rome, she knew, meant more to her than Chuck. It meant everything to them both, but it had taken her from less than nothing to everything; it had restored the world to her, restored her to herself. It somehow meant more than everything to her.

And now she was carrying life, a life half hers, half Chuck's. Chuck had met a woman dead inside and made her a vessel of life. She did not know how to tell him, to fully explain it, that but she tried daily to show him. To make sure it was in her eyes on the infrequent times she could manage to tell him how much she loved him. _And, God, how I love him!_

She brushed the brooch pinned to the sweatshirt. Chuck had kept it for her. Keeping it herself, keeping it in Rome, had felt like too intimate a betrayal. She made do with her thieved sweatshirt.

She had plans for that precious mistletoe. She was going to go upstairs and enact those plans soon, waking her husband for a Christmas Eve Eve party-for-two there in their bedroom.

Ellie still did not know about Carol's past. As a result, Ellie was always talking about how much Carol had changed Chuck, ended his brooding, secured all the advances he had made since Rome, and chased away the shadows. Someday, she would have to tell Ellie, tell Ellie that the shadows Carol chased away were shadows Carol created, and shadows her husband had forgiven her for creating.

She still had a slight scar on her side, a slight scar on her cheek. The life she had led had marked her but it did not own her. Not any more. She was her own. A caregiver. A wife. In a few months, a mother.

All because she had tried to make a holiday out of a mission, and had succeeded — a cock-eyed, unpredictable kind of success.

Chuck carried the holiday in his eye. She was carrying his child, their child.

Holiday. Holy day. A new _life_. A _new_ life. Christmas.

She went upstairs to the bedroom, to Chuck. She stopped in the bathroom at the top of the stairs, fluffling her hair as she looked in the mirror, making sure that she was as she wanted to be for the party she was planning.

She stopped, struck for a moment by her own eyes. They were so blue, so deeply blue.

_True blue._

She left the bathroom and opened the bedroom door. She picked up her phone and turned on Sia's _Underneath the Mistletoe. _As the music began Carol climbed on the bed. "_Chuuuck!_ Wake up. Time to unwrap your early present…"

_I've got a crush, la lala la la la  
Like a schoolgirl  
And I wanna rush, la lala la la la  
Like a fool would  
So step on the gas, la lala la la la  
Come on over  
'Cause baby it's Christmas, la lala la la la  
I wanna know ya..._

* * *

_**The End **_

**A Roman Holiday**

* * *

A/N: _Merry Christmas!_

Give that Sia tune a listen. The words are great — and particularly in this context. I was tinkering with it on guitar as I wrote this chapter.

I am fascinated by this story structure, a story that recontextualizes itself as it ends. (It's common, on one of its uses, in heist films.) I've flirted with the structure here and there in other stories but this is the first time I used it quite as I have here. Love to hear your final thoughts!

Thanks to Beckster1213 and David Carner for some pre-reading.


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